Paulo: We were expecting people to be shocked by it and hopefully laugh at how ridiculous the artwork and layout is but we never ever expected to have them returned! That’s just beyond us! At least they’re considerate enough to send it back instead of throwing it in the trash.

We have no clue which magazines returned the disc, the label knows. We’re really tempted to find out but its for the best that we don’t. Also a bunch of magazines rejected to review or interview us after they got the CD.
 
There was one European print magazine, let’s just keep the name anonymous, that attempted to interview us but the questions had a hint malicious intent, asking if we were gay or if we blow each others’ dicks, or if we think child prostitution was cool. The guy barely asked anything about the music, he was just concerned about what he saw, he judged us simply by the cover and somehow we summoned the homosexual within him. We answered back as graphic as possible. When that happened, the next day after we sent the interview, we got an email forwarded by our label saying that the magazine has refused to print the interview and don’t want to be associated with us.
 
If you only knew which country this magazine is from, you’d find it hilariously ironic. I’m really REALLY itching to spread the forwarded email but that would just fuck over our label and they’ve done so much for us and we don’t want to ruin a good thing for them. We’re expected to get interviewed again from the same magazine this December but by a different guy. The dude, was really stuck up, what the hell does he expect? This is metal. Decrepit Birth had a pedophile in the band and now they’re one of the fastest up and coming bands. Decrepit Birth has nothing really to do with this but I just like to mention that they had a pedophile in the band. I still like them though. HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Since our label isn’t strictly just a death metal label they sent it out to the full spectrum of the metal community. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this album offers nothing new to the genre but just the magical brutality of American deathgrind. Those who aren’t familiar with this sub-genre all hated it and portrayed it as a failure but our targeted audience… they seem to dig it and that’s all it matters to me. Its just hilarious to get mentioned along with Brodequin, Malignancy, Wicked Innocence in the same sentence because we all love those bands and its what we were aiming for.

A lot of reviews we’ve read seems like they didn’t pass the first two songs. We’ve gotten compared to Anal Cunt, Anal Blast, and the fucking Meat Shits!!! It’s hilarious since all three bands are total homophobes, I’m pretty sure the comparison was about the musical ability, which is pretty on point, but the dude was just more pissed off about the layout. Most of the reviews are pretty much on point. A lot of production/mastering/mixing complaints, the lack of originality. we’re not gonna argue it. It’s true.

None. At least they got that right! hahahahaha!!!!!

Alex. He’s the mastermind behind the hyper homo-erotic concept and it just snowballed from there into this huge gaping steaming jizz. The biggest inspiration was from the biographical-drama “Beautiful Boxer” about Nong Toom, who was gay but it enabled him to achieve his dream of transforming himself into a woman. He had to fight his way to the top and along the way slowly becoming a woman. Nong Toom [who now goes by Parinaya Charoemphol] is a real deal Muay Thai Ladyboy, and was once Thailand’s Muay Thai kick boxing champion! Besides that, Ong Bak! That movie rules hard!

We didn’t realized we had fans in the first place. It’s been positive and we’re glad that they definitely dig it. Prior to the release we’ve constantly warned them and challenged them that it’ll be a hella gay release. They’ve been just open-minded about it and just having a big laugh at how hilarious the contrast of the artwork and the music is.
 

Another theme of this album is definitely contrast of extremes. The opening song and the closing song are totally different, we open with the biggest, heaviest staccato gravity slams and we close the album with and old school Immolation type fade out with a bunch of our friends doing vocals with us in the coda…. which barely happens these days.

The artwork is a total eye-candy, Scott Porterfield did an amazing job with it but the real shocker is the the inlay and the CD itself. My god! Especially the CD itself! hahahhaha!!!! That’s probably the most homo-erotic layout ever. Not even a million Wham!, Village People and Cher albums can compare to how absurdly gay it is. Thank you for being a part of this! HAHAHAHA!!!

There’s some ladyboys out there that are soooooooooooo hot! Some are even hotter than real women! A lot of them have AIDS. Going over to Thailand and fucking a tranny is like playing Russian Roulette. Speaking for myself here, I’d probably fuck a ladyboy just to state for the record that I did fuck a ladyboy. But the Kathoey better he fucking hot.

Too mannish. Let’s have Devourment’s "Fucked To Death" play in the background and we’ll see how it goes from there.

My butt is only for exit. I’d take a bunch of pictures of it though, damn, that’s bigger than a whale’s dork!

As long as Marissa is comfortable and happy with herself, more the power to her. Everything was foreshadowed in Cretin’s theme already. As long people aren’t killing each other everyone should do what they think is right and what makes them happy. Life is too short to live in disappointment.

Again… if Devourment’s "Fucked To Death" was playing… we’ll see…

Eh… uh… I’m too damn manly to become a woman, even though I have tits. Man-tits made from excessive amount of brutalitarian meatdogs. I dunno…

The two dudes, Brandon Stousy and the other shall remain unnamed out of respect, were fans of ours and they both arranged this intricate sideshow. They thought how hilarious would it would be to have a REAL TRANNY!?? Honestly man, that was THE BEST SHOW ever! We’ve never ever experienced something like that! I pity anyone who missed that set because that was surely a once in a life time opportunity. A port-a-potty on hydraulics, poop, blasting poop, pipe, contact mic… that show was the epitome of what Copremesis is all about. People were fucking grossed out and the craziest shit is that even though we knew about it ahead of time, it was just fucking surreal to see a tranny blast 10 feet of shit in front of you. It was something to behold and much respect to Brandon and M!!!!!

It was just the craziest idea that was made into a reality. What the fuck, indeed!

Yes, by far. Nothing can top that. Unless I see bears start playing goregrind then that’s when I know its the end of times.

I’ve only done this twice. first time was the pre-fest for the second Maryland Death Fest performing with Vomit Remnants. Fast forward four years later, someone yelled out “SHOW ME YOUR DICK!” then I thought “Oh, what the hell?” It holds no powers, just shame, regret and hatred for my genetics but it does make people laugh which I readily embrace than be constantly ashamed about it.

Main St. Flushing Bound 7 Train – on the corner. I had this annoying erection and I had the hots for a classmate that I couldn’t get out of my head. I just had to squeeze one out, as soon as I was by myself I challenged myself to see if I could jizz fast enough. Luckily I prematurely ejaculate. I’ll be terrible when I’m about to have sex because the unlucky lady will be extremely disappointed. Short, small wiener and I prematurely ejaculate… awesome combination! That was my only and last time (jerking off in public)!

Biolich was the main reason why we decided to sign with them. Paragon’s label head went through hell for those guys and seeing that dedication we knew they’d do the same for us. The fact that every other label out there forgot about us, they were the ones that were consistently asking about us. Those guys are troopers and we love them. The fact that they know what they’re getting into when signing us and still sticking with us is fucking awesome. Nothing but love for those guys!

The Philippines has seem to finally come around and making this fat piece of shit Pinoy proud! Down From The Wound, Human Mastication, Pus Vomit are all in that American death metal style brutality. Phlegmthrower is totally SMES and Libido Airbag worship cybergrind and Religious Nightmare is the closest thing to Sweden’s Retaliation!!!

We didn’t learn any Iniquity songs at the time. We’ve been always meaning to record an Iniquity song. I’m sure as hell though that it won’t be from the Serenadium album because that to me is absolute perfection and covering anything from that release is blasphemous. It’ll most likely "Desirated Profligacy" from the The Hidden Lore EP. It’s far ahead from the future, but I’d really love to see an Iniquity cover for our 2nd full-length.

Zack Braff.

Billy: No, I’m more into stuff like Slammification, Disgourgement, Entorturement, JunJunJun, Grooveality, Cumleashed, Muffocation, and Believer.

Billy: Your favorite bands are Crisis and Deeds Of Flesh. I think you have more to worry about than me worrying about you saying our bands are "happygrind"!

Billy: I’m sure they’re jumping up and down and doing the neutron-dance. But don’t take my word for it….let’s ask them.

Digestor (Ghoul): Whuh? Oh… that. Yeah, congratulations on not knowing the difference between happy grind and happy thrash.

Tim (Splatterhouse): Oh yay! Kings? Great! We are so used to being called ‘Queens’ all the time; it is nice to be Kings for a change, even if we have to share it with those degenerate fucks in Ghoul! I personally think we are WAY more happy than they are, I mean we take more Zoloft/Xanax/Paxil than the whole state of Utah! And our parents will be very proud! They were very disappointed with our first venture into brootal metal as the BRUTAL CUNT RAPING MIDGET KNIFE FIGHTERS, and they were right, there definitely needs to be more positive role models and really, why not us? Bands like Gigantic Brain really bring me down, and that is just not what I need or the world needs now.

Billy: I really can’t answer this since I still don’t know what "happygrind" even means. Is that something you made up when you were rapping over your favorite slam/groove-death song while you tripped over your baggy pants?

Billy: Honestly, all our stuff has done really well I think. Some haven’t sold as much as others but I can’t say there’s been any total failures or anything like that.

Billy: I’m 110% happy with the way the new Engorged and Lord Gore albums have come out. Both of these bands just keep getting better and better I think. I’m also really happy with the upcoming new Machetazo album which is a concept based on a series of Spanish horror films from the 70’s that I’m a really big fan of. They really did those films justice.

Billy: I really hate the first 2 compilation CD’s we did. Those are totally awful. I wasn’t happy with the Intense Hammer Rage CD. It was too tech/brutal death style for my tastes. They were really nice/cool guys though, so it’s nothing personal. I just didn’t like how that album came out. The County Medical Examiners album isn’t a fave much either. It’s basically too much of a gimmick CD to me these days. It has no replay value at all. It’s just a curiosity piece, basically. It’s still better than most generic brutal death metal stuff though.

Billy: I think that guy has seen too many episodes of St. Elsewhere and ER.

Billy: Nope. Maybe if Impetigo got back together… but that’s never going to happen so nope… nobody! Well, maybe Timeghoul…

Billy: They just decided one day to do it on a Japanese label, which is no problem to me. It kinda bummed me out since we spent over 2 years saying it was coming out on Razorback, but whatever. I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it. We have plenty to keep us busy.

Billy: No bands have been assholes, actually. I’ve always tried to work with people who are cool and down to earth. I always make that a priority when I commit to work with someone.

Billy: We use my old wrestling ring from JLN toys to figure it out. I usually pick the George The Animal Steele figure and Jill picks Brutus Beefcake and we let them fight it out. George Steele had a green tongue, you know… and Brutus Beefcake was Hulk Hogan’s brother (I think)… what was the question again?

Billy: Yeah, it would definitely be something that I’d want to happen in Portland, Oregon. That’s where most of our bands are from and everybody over there seems really cool and truly into good metal. They have a thing going on over there and I think it would be the perfect area to have it in.

Billy: No, there was no backlash. The band and Razorback both agreed to just stop pressing the album since it was causing them so many problems over there. We both felt it would help their case out more. Also, they weren’t allowed to get any copies of the album so we didn’t want to keep pressing it since they couldn’t even get any copies to sell. It wasn’t right. Looking back on it, it was definitely the right thing to do, especially since it was never an album I was really that into in the first place.

Billy: Well, I don’t think because it’s "extreme"… just stupid maybe. I hate all that child porn/fetus-rape whatever stuff. But whatever, every band can sing about whatever they want. I don’t really focus on stuff that I’m not interested in. Usually I’m on some horror film web site looking up when Blood Diner will be out on DVD (got it, and I love it!).

Billy: I think bands like White Lion, Extreme, Warrant, Jackyl, Fungo Mungo, Seahags, Bango Tango, Nitro, Bulletboys, Leatherwolf, Nelson, Trixter, Tora Tora, Britney Fox, Firehouse, Kix, and Winger are currently destroying the metal scene and need to be stopped.

Billy: Usually anything from the late 70’s and 80’s is the best, obviously. Anything influenced by that Scream franchise is usually the worst. A few undiscovered "gems" I’d recommend would be: The Mutilator, House On Sorority Row, Cheerleader Camp, Night Of The Demon (instead of a guy in a mask you get Bigfoot killing people, how can you go wrong with that?), Humongous, Don’t Go In The House, The Initiation, Pranks, and so many more that it would take forever to answer. Check out Legacy Of Blood, a great new book all about slasher films. It just came out last year and I’ve been reading it non-stop.

Billy: I’ve only ever seen the first two, and I thought they were pretty fucking hilarious actually. It’s so funny seeing that over hyped "celebrity" Jennifer Aniston run around while Wicket from Return Of The Jedi is chasing her asking for "me gold coin". It’s priceless crap. Or how about part 2 when the little bastard wants a child and says "She’ll be bearing my wee little ones soon" or something like that. Wow… a great new franchise is born!

Billy: I only like new horror movies with tons of CGI FX, fast-MTV style editing, and films that have Rob Zombie, Static X, and Fozzy on the soundtrack. Anything directed by the guy who did House Of The Dead is what I’m all about these days. You can’t go wrong with remakes too! I hope they remake all my favorites like Dr. Giggles, Wishmaster, Strangeland, and Jeepers Creepers! I also hope they re-make the re-make of The Ring.

Billy: Our most intimate moments are when I’m trying to dust off my Godzilla figure collection and Jill walks by and says "you’re pathetic". It brings a tear of joy to my eye just thinking about it.

Billy: As stupid as the movie was, I actually found myself enjoying lots of it. It had a wonderful nu-metal soundtrack also. I can’t wait for Leprechaun vs. Munchies with soundtrack by Shadows Fall.

Billy: Didn’t that contest rule? I mean…wow! Who comes up with awesome stuff like that? WE do, that’s right! I’m not a walking encyclopedia of Transformers knowledge though…so I’m gonna let Ryan from Engorged answer this since he’s the biggest dork…uh…I mean, fan. Go to it bot-brain…

Ryan (Engorged): With front mounted razor-tipped drills, sonar distorters and a 30 MM submachine gun, as well as the capability to remotely control his outer bio-mechanical “pretender” shell, coupled with an all around obnoxious, selfish and nasty disposition G1 Snarler would make short work of Razorbeast.

Billy: Earache: Are they even still around? Metal Blade: I like lots of their 80’s releases and the first two Cannibal Corpse albums, but other than that I don’t really know anything about what they’ve been doing for the past decade. I did like that Defleshed CD they put out, but it wasn’t really their release I guess. Century Media: They have Impaled now, so they rule! Relapse: I’ll answer that later.

Billy: You mean to tell me Earache really is still around? Wow…I really have no clue about that label. I can’t even remember the last album I bought that was on that label. It might have been Bolt Thrower’s IVth Crusade, but I’m not sure. Anyway…to answer your questions, it would have to depend on exactly what kind of deal it would be. I’m very protective of Razorback and I would never just dive into some kind of "deal" if I didn’t believe in it 100%. The metal scene is a sleazy, fucked up business…probably worse than any other one out there. I don’t trust anybody but myself, basically. We’ve been offered a few deals to do Razorback Europe with some "big" labels, but I turned it all down because I don’t think anybody is really on the same page as Razorback. They just see us as being a "product" to shift more "units" of, that’s all. I’m much more happy being a smaller label, putting out whatever the hell I want and having fun. These CD’s I put out are the kinds of albums I wish Earache and Relapse were putting out! They’re not, so I started Razorback to put out the kind of stuff I would buy and enjoy as a fan. I’d only work with another label if they really believed in us and were seriously fans of our label and bands and weren’t out to fuck us over.

Billy: No wonder I stopped paying attention to them…

Billy: I think it was more of Necropolis letting that two-faced, lying, scumbag, jealous, insecure gore-poser Matt Harvey from Exhumed run the label and basically help fuck over every band and then try to pretend he did nothing wrong (just like the Nazis who were "only following orders"). Just ask any band that was on there about all of that and they’ll tell you the truth. I think if anything, Impaled was the best thing that label had along with Engorged and they blew it by basically being the sleazy fucktards that they are. Let’s ask Sean from Impaled what he has to say about this.

Sean (Impaled): I’d stop just short of comparing anyone there to the Nazis. Maybe the Klan, but not Nazis. Nazis were really organized and they probably would have had a very successful label, if they hadn’t been too busy trying to enslave the world. No, the staff at Necropolis were more like these 5th generation Klan members who have obvious chromosomal abnormalities but still talk all day about how the white race is pure and white people are superior and all that. Yeah, I’d have to say their downfall was when they became white supremacists, not hiring Raul and Leon.

Billy: Ok…let me tell you the truth. Ghoul is really The Great Kat. That’s all I can say about it, but let’s ask Sean again what he thinks of all this.

Sean (Impaled): Impaled has never played a show with Ghoul, so the question is invalid.

Billy: Yes, it’s called the Bigfoot Splatterthrashers cult. Yep, that’s it. All your effort was wasted.

Billy: I used to beat the shit out of those dirtbag heshers at the handball courts back in the day. You know the kind, sitting there trying to tell me that Pink Floyd was cool because it was "mellow" and then trying to defend Metallica’s "black" album since it was the only Metallica album they ever heard. Pathetic. I’m a metal GOD, and I can never be stopped Mr. Foofur’s Tomb.

Billy: I have a degree in being a total jerk, does that count? Jill went to college and took a lot of business classes, so she is more skilled to answer this one. My schooling came from years of listening to metal and watching horror movies. Huh… huh heh heh… cool right? I like when the Critters eat the chili…

Billy: Yes. Please don’t start anymore fucking record labels. Thank you.

Billy: For me to answer this, I must go back in time. I’m going to use the Gore-Boar 5000 Splatmatic-Time Machine… here I go….. FSHOOM!!!!!!!!!!!……….. Hey man! Wow, Relapse rules. They’ve been putting out some of my favorite underground death/grind stuff ever. There’s so many cool guys that work there that I get along great with. Rob Waller, Tom Hailey, Pellet, Bill Yurkiewicz, etc. All great guys! Everybody there is totally down with old school metal and grindcore, no trends or anything like that. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about them at all. People bitch about them but I see no reason why when they’re releasing so many cool albums. I’m really looking forward to that Goreaphobia album and hopefully the General Surgery Sex God Pathology album comes out soon also. I keep reading about that in their mail-order catalogs.

Billy: I’m sorry to break your heart man, but no rip-offs to report. What a letdown this must be. I really failed.

John: Whenever you’re hard.

Well then take it off! Lets get lubed!

I’m waiting…. don’t tease.

That was one of the reasons. He was under age so we wanted someone that we wouldn’t have to worry about getting arrested for and that he just wasn’t into pleasuring everyone in the band. We were all very tight, if you know what I mean, and we went in to record Summary Execution with every intention of having Spencer on the vocals for the album, but once the music was tracked and it was time for the vocals to be done, it just wasn’t working and nobody in the band thought we were accomplishing the most brutal, crushing album that we were capable of doing and the main change was in the vocal style. We all decided that we needed to fix the problem. It was a rough time for a personnel change, but it had to be done and just like when having sex there is no mercy.

We actually tried to get Paul Stanley who comes with his own buttplugs, so that would have been a match made in heaven, but all of our personalities didn’t click together. Then we tried out Halford, but all he wanted us sex 24/7 from all of us young tight strapping men. So then we decided well we better go with what we know. Paul has always done back up low vocals behind Spencer. We took that, put him a little more in the front, gave him some more lines and he was good to go. Then all of a sudden Mike was like "Let me try it out" and he went in there, just free-flowed over a song we finished and everyone’s jaw hit the floor. Just like "Holy shit this is exactly what we have been looking for!!" I mean we already knew what his personal anatomy consisted of, so we took that into consideration but figured we can get extensions and so we let him take over front man vocal duties on Summary… We are still looking for a full-time front man, so if anyone knows how to contact Geoff Tate let us know or tell him that Vulgar Pigeons are interested, and to come wearing his spandex biker shorts to the tryout!

Basically we took him, because we knew no one would be hitting on him. We don’t like having competition between the men in the band. You haven’t seen Mike in fishnet stockings and heavy blue eyeliner with his hair teased, so you don’t know what you are missing. If this question was your way of hitting on him, you better hope to god I don’t see you, because he is my partner for the months of August, October, and February. I guess we could take on a threesome… oops! Did I say that? Besides bringing a new fresh physical sensation to VP, we wanted to really thicken up the sound and get some ideas into the pot while writing and that’s what Mike did, He is an amazing, amazing guitar player even if he does wear a thong and fishnets while playing. Hell that’s we love him! God this interview is really turning me on…

Everyone is welcome to run around as much as they like, just keep yourself protected and remember who your daddy is… I mean I double and triple my pleasures all the time, I have the sexiness of VP, the maturity of Benümb, and I am now working on a more exotic styling with a new project I have taken to the base. Severed Savior is amazing. They are a great band, talented as fuck, and its only time until they erect the success they deserve. We are all friends together and sometimes have oiled up slumber parties with all of us! Plus they practice right next door to us, so glory holes are running rampant on the wall! I was just hanging at J-Lab studios last night with Severed Savior and they are recording some new stuff that is just mind blowing. Makes me wish I practiced more at certain things.

If you think I look good under the lights. Imagine me propped up on a mixing board, spread open and ready to be EQ’d. Paul and I have known each other since we were 5 years old, not sexually active during all those years, but definitely a good majority of them so our relationship is far deeper than the band or even sex for that matter. Life partners we are. When Benümb was recording their first album, Soul Of The Martyr, things were really screwed up and chaotic, and Paul stepped in to play guitar. Well, he was going through some personal stress and it carried over to the band and he just needed a break on it, so he left and we had to go on and finished up the album. During all this time Paul and I are still hanging out, getting plastered every night with Sanders. Getting lathered up, letting feelings flow as we sit in the hot tub, and the idea of starting VP comes along and, hell I am a whore so I hopped up on the back of it, took it by the reins, and really rode it home. I’m good like that.

Benümb just finished doing the Loud as Fuck fest in New York. We have a split coming out with Agoraphobic on Relapse, and we have a split coming out with Pig Destroyer on Loudnet, and now it is just writing time for the third album, which will coming out probably the beginning of 2002. Touching on the subject of my relationship with Paul, it is spiritual and deep but we are always open to new exciting life situations so please don’t let him scare you away.

VP is waiting the release of Summary Execution, which should be the end of August. We are gearing up for a mini tour with Cattle Decaption which will hit the West Coast in October. Probably get drunk tonight and take bubble baths together as we express our feelings, our wants and needs to each other about the direction of Vulgar Pigeons and what our next step should be after the Cattle Decapitation stint.

Well most sexy attractive pieces of flesh are into that song and we just wanted to stamp our rainbow all over the Carcass version. Plus the fact that most of us knew the song and have fucked around with it for years, so it was just a natural choice. It fit in with us really easy and snug. No need to dress it up and get it all slickly lubed up. If you dot mind me asking, what kind of panties are you were right now?? Wearing… sorry getting a little nervous.

I have seen a number of press items on the cover album. Most have been really good and positive. I’d say this comp has done great, usually most comps just get shitted on and left behind as a money maker, but this one has been getting positive reviews and people seem to be really into it. I love the cover that VP did. I think it turned out great! The sample in the middle of the song, all of it! Sometimes the greatest end result is made with mistakes… except when you’re really drunk in a unfamiliar city with guy named Bernard. Who says he really cares about you… bastard!

The sex is much rougher. Spencer was always emo about sex and he had to have candles burning and everything need to be planned out, ya know. "First I’m going to start on your nipples, work my way down to your belly button, and proceed to the magic spot." Things like that. With this new VP, its just grab your hole and go, sheets flying off the bed, payphones being broken, broomsticks being cracked, the whole nine yards. The sex is superior by far… To quote Madonna, who is a life long idol of mine, when you come to see VP, “Leave your inhibitions at the door”. The music, although not as exciting as our renewed love life, is in the same category; everything is heavier, a lot more girth, circumference, thickness, weight, the whole package.. Summary Execution by far steps above Genetic Predisposition in my opinion.

Have you seen the new Planet Of The Apes yet?

Go see it now!! It is so stimulating to see all of these little hairy beasts running around conquering man and dominating them? God, how I wish I knew how to build a time pod… So anyways, back to the comparison. God I am so worked up…

Benümb is more straightforward, kinda of like the hetro male. Just plays aggressive doing the straight and narrow. VP is like the bi-sexual, looking to be let out of its cage. We’ll take a little from the hetero, a little from the gay side, a little bestiality, throw a little scat in there and you got something filled with so many options and flavours that the possibilities and boundaries are endless. Severed is like the nerd that is neither gay or straight, he just sits in the room calculating numbers, facts, plotting, and he is so good yet no sexual denomination. Hell the only reason Mike is getting laid is because he is a Pigeon. The rest of those guys are reading Fangoria, thinking about their next song. I think if they got laid, they might lose their edge. So they stay frustrated, they can’t help but make amazing shit.

Oh my god! I opened up to you and this is how you repay me, by looking at a female’s breasts? You are so hetero. Typical man. Oh god, I don’t know if I can go on with this interview or not. If it makes you feel better I can put a wig on, it all looks the same from behind.

I don’t waste my time with books and stuff, I am a magazine man. Actually, I have read the Fermata, but you would have to ask the big intellectual in the band, Paul. All I know is Kerouac is this author, he is probably straight and the book is about something. Something not interesting I am sure, but it is from there Paul came up with it and I had to agree as my band name suggestions of "Flooded Anal Cavity", "Fuck My Ass With A Dildo", and "Man On Man Blowjob Craving" all got turned down, so we were stuck with Vulgar Pigeons. Can we go off the record for a minute?

Jesus I think my pants are going to split from this boner I got… ok.. I am ready to go on.

Ok, at least I am not alone.

Mmmm, who is this you talk of, and can I get in contact to take him on a test spin with your permission of course? Better yet, I can play drums for HomoErectus and Abbas on bass? That way there are threesomes to start and end practices. You haven’t lived until you have seen orgasm all over my snare drum, and then play on it. Its like the whole rain/water effect but much tastier.

Yes, it is tough, but I think this interview is helping us both reach new sensations that we have never felt!

Would I be pounding away by giving a tongue lashing or would I be pounding away with passion stick?

I think so.. I could go for a milkshake, so you know what that means? We’ll have to add ice to the ass and really pound it out for an outrageous amount of time!

Do we have any more questions, or are we ready to cyber this cockfest out yet?!?!

Mine. I have the genital stretcher here and the strap bench for further erotic sensations!

You don’t even know!!! Mmmm…

(laughs) Killer! Glad I could add to the dumbness!

Yeah… now I’m going to have guys hitting on me…

Gurge: Well it was painful for all; he’s the nicest guy you could meet. Many an eve, we whored and gored together, boozing it up and handing out beatdowns like a Rent-A-Santa at a welfare Christmas shindig! But our goals were different in the end, our dog was slaughtered long ago, we needed spare parts for the forgotten flesh! We bear him no ill will and wish him well. R.I.P. Redrum.

SCSI: At this time we do not have a full-time replacement. The session drummer is someone whose identity cannot be released at this time due to shall we say "legal reasons"? I will say this though… The Autophagous Orgy will feature guest musicians from the following bands – Engorged, Fornicator, Thy Infernal, Cumshot, Murdergod (R.I.P.) just to mention a few, as well as a collection of homeless bums and random fast food employees from all your favorite fine dining establishments!

Gurge: Well actually I play guitar and do vox, but I just can’t belt out the bowel chowder and blunder on guitar at the same time, so live I just do vox and snuff a close friend of the band, takes up the slack on guitar. So most all of the photos of me show me croaking into a mic cause they are all live.

Nekro: Why are you so amazed by the fact that we have two vocalists? Haven’t you ever heard of Extreme Noise Terror? Most bands around nowadays have three vocals anyway. Remember Carcass? We only thrash about on the stage when we perform live, or when we thrash fucking posers at a bar!!!

Nekro: It seems you are obsessed with my Manowar-esque build! Don’t stare at the photos of me for too long or you may go blind. I haven’t met too many dedicated metal heads that have been to the joint. Sorry bro!

Gurge: The lineup of this band is very amorphous, but as I said, SCSI and I sling axe on recordings, we both do bass parts on the CD. Dr. Hordak Skum is one of the founding members who played guiterror on the demo but he left cause we ran out of smack and Thai food, we dropped him off at Greyhound with a smart haircut, $5 and an ass-hair sweater. However, he’s promised to return to do his vox on "Crash Course In Psychopathology" and some leads in exchange for a 4-star order of pad thai and a suitcase full of unmarked Magic The Gathering cards.

SCSI: Now this question really opens up the vault… The original line-up was Hordak and Gurge on guitars, me on bass, and Nekro on vox and SG Redrum on drums. The line up quickly shifted because of Hordak’s constant "where is he now" status and I took over on guitars. Last time we heard from him he was running in and out of whore houses avoiding "The man" overseas. We recently parted ways with SG Redrum and are looking for a permanent replacement. You interested? How about Abbas? He was out here last year drinking my beer with Impaled!

Nekro: Look, some of us are wanted for crimes that I cannot speak of for fear of being tracked down. If Snuff was to show his face in public, he would be brought up on several federal charges including necroprostitution.

SCSI: I have a rare bone marrow disease that forces me to wear a mask when I leave my clean room. Trust me, it’s not pretty.

Nekro: We are a METAL band, metal bands wear spikes, leather, bullet belts, bones and other metal bands’ shirts!! Again with the image, why don’t you e-mail me your fashion tips for fall and winter 2001?!?!

Gurge: I used to own a pretty sweet ass-hair sweater with real pube hand ticking, but as I said, I gave it over to Skum when he split.

SCSI: Yeah! What about em?

Gurge: Well actually, we’ve done many things that would be frowned upon by the man, an Asian prostitution ring gone horribly awry, uhh… several budding meth kitchens, not to mention numerous illegitimate lil’ gorelings who were unfortunately spawned by our laundry list of gorewhores, so we’ve seen fit to disguise our good names and we’ve switched to our maiden names for privacy and all. No super powers unless you count a third ball and the ability to clear a city block when dropping anchor! (Light a damn match ya hesshier!)

SCSI: I can type 120 WPM, is that special?

Nekro: The Impetigo tribute album was a complete honor for myself personally, as Impetigo were the most original, sick, primitive gore-death band ever! Plus, I’m from Illinois and Stevo was a total mentor to me for helping me with my mag, In The Form Of Darkness, by sending me Impetigo and tape trading other bands’ stuff for me that was IMPOSSIBLE to get at that time (1990-1993) in Illinois! I was fortunate enough to see Impetigo with Phantasm and the godly Disciples Of Hate in’92. "Manchester…" is the song that is furthest left of what they always did, it’s sooo creepy and moody that you can envision the dead devouring their victims, and taking over the world! It gave me chills to listen to their version when I first heard it!

Gurge: Well Bill and Jill were staunch supporters of our disgusting dreck from the get go. Hordak and I had met Billy back in ‘86 at a Forbidden concert in San Francisco, (CHALICE OF BLOOD!!!!!) and we started trading the popular and collectable Garbage Pail Kids cards. I was fingered for several stat rape charges and an ‘89 sodomy charge in Wisconsin, and when I finally got outta the slam it was 2000, so I changed my name from 40-Dog Smoke Bear, went whoring, crawled out of whatever bottle I slept in and said "Hot damn!! I want to be in one of those new fangled gore metal bands and then I want to put it out via that Billy guy from the Forbidden show!" Soon after we met Jill and were charmed pink and twitching by how kool she was as well.

SCSI: Why WOULDN’T we sign with Razorback? They’re the undisputed Kings Of Gore!

Gurge: Well, I don’t want to give it away, lets just call it tasty. The album will be called The Autophagous Orgy so derive from that what you may. Its very disturbing, but I think the kids will appreciate it, very gory, but you can still spank to it. Sailor Moon blows ass! Trey must take gay pills to dig that shit cartoon! I’m a fan of the Urotsukidoji series, La Blue Girl, Ninja Scroll, and my fave Japanese flick ever Mermaid In A Manhole from the Guinea Pig series, plus they have the hottest lil’ mama-sans ever to make a discreet $5 over yonder in Japan!

Gurge: Well we’ve never had any trouble with customs so far, but if the authorities or the ATF wants to have a little, I say BRING IT! Here at the vomitorivm compound, we’re at work around the clock and have amassed enough firearms, top ramen and fresh porn to make Waco look like a three hour tour!

Nekro: Yea, we don’t live in the land of warmetal godz SADISTIK EXEKUTION! FUKK YOU WE ARE METAL!

SCSI: It’s real simple chief, we’re using his art and there’s nothing ANYONE can do about it.

Gurge: Yeah the art won’t cause a problem, its so loving and Disney-esque, almost wholesome that it is sure to be embraced by the warm and sugary public.

SCSI: If the art gets banned, we’ll prolly put it on the website with some sort of a disclaimer that will discourage everyone that’s not old enough to view from looking at it. There will most likely be a cardboard cutout of one of the girls from the art that says "You must be AT LEAST this tall to view this".

Nekro: Why thank you on the Shakespeare comparison. Titus is a stunning piece of work! However, he did not directly participate in the lyric writing process.

Gurge: When we write lyrics, the formula is 50% sickness, 30% pussy reference, 20% misogyny, and 110% class! The ladies dig on em big time!

Nekro: It only gets sicker, gorier, creepier, and more disgusting than before! BEWARE! DO NOT play the Lord Gore CD in a graveyard after 11:11 PM, we will not be held responsible for any zombie molestations, mutilations, lacerations, penetrations, etc.

Nekro: We are considered gods on Cybertron, Io, Algol, Monoceros and Neptune, but I had no knowledge of a Malaysian kult of fans!

SCSI: I often get e-mail from people in Malaysia but am missing a translator so I’m not sure of what they’re saying. Now that I think about it, I’m not even sure they’re FROM Malaysia…

Gurge: We have a great scene here, its very incestuous as has been said ad infinitum, but the bands are very carnivorous and hungry too, were like a big dopy inbred litter of deformed, slavering, horny saint bernards on crack. Wraithen are friends of ours who dress in black and hold seances on November 11th, creepy bastards those. Our other comrades in severed arms are Engorged and Fornicator, sick wife-beating grudgefuckmongers who have a CD out on Moribund in October.

Nekro: Also, Genital Meat Grinder and black metal heathens Thy Infernal.

Gurge: Well, thanx for your time and ceaseless browbeating, may your ball hair be entangled with your bung hair forming a poop-proof chode pocket! Til next time, pull up a stool, enjoy a nice steamy bowl of bowel chowder garnished with lung butter and ball cheese, and sell your children to buy our CD The Autophagous Orgy out on Razorback soon! REST IN PIECES!!! XXX

Nekro: Thanks for the support, and I will send you an autographed photo for you to hang on your wall next to your Ross of Impaled Metal Maniacs shot!

SCSI: Thanks man, tell your friends!

Marc: Hey Teufel, thank you for letting me answering your questions. Since the release of Hymns… we have done a lot gigs with a lot of gore-grind bands. We also kicked out some band members and replaced them. The new full-length will be available at the end of this year or maybe in the beginning of next year. We are busy writing new songs. There will be about 30 songs on the third full-length. We have indeed released a split with Cock And Ball Torture on Fleshfeast Records. These songs were recorded a long time ago. The split with Stoma we have released ourselves on Through The Eyes Of The Hated Records, just to make a lot of money so we can quit working. The next release will be a 4-way split CD with Rompprop (ex-Smegma), Plasma, Urine Festival (gore-noise band from me and Erwin with a lot of porn) and maybe Cock And Ball Torture. Also a really nasty release will be a split mCD Urine Festival/Dysmenorrheic Haemorrhage. E-Mail me for more info.

I didn’t choose to record that song, I think Erwin did. The song is recorded somewhere in 2000 I think, in Belgium. We also recorded a split with Sanitys Dawn at the same recording sessions. First of all these recordings would be released as a split CD with the Brazilian guys from Gore, but these guys never replied anymore. Last time I heard something from Robot was that he was threatening to come over to Holland to finish off our bass player. What a prick he is.

I don’t care honestly. These things also happened to Utopie. I like IHR very much, but they use drawings as pictures, what’s wrong with this?

Simply ridiculous! Fuck them in Australia. I was planning to go on vacation in Australia, but no way!

Hmm… their songs are too complicated for us to cover, but maybe Gore from Brazil wants to contribute. They are my personal heroes at this moment.

Hmm… I think we will write the new album in a half year. About 30 songs, sometimes one minute and sometimes 10 seconds. We will go in the studios for about ten days! Hymns… we recorded, mixed and mastered in 4 days.

I am not really fond of these bands, except for Severe Torture. I prefer real Holland gore-grind like Tumour, S.M.E.S, Stoma, Lifesick, Slokdarm Poep, Rompprop, Infected Entrails, Hippie Blood Bastards, Carnival Of Carnage, Intumescence. Necrofetisism, Trauma Team and some kind of shitty gore-noise-porn-grind band called Urine Festival…

I really don’t know! We kicked Bart out of Last Days Of Humanity so I don’t know. I don’t think he was repeating "fucking". He more was singing in French over and over. Our new band member Erwin (S.M.E.S) and me are the new singers. Erwin does the low vocals, I do the bubbly vocals.

Well, well, well… you are well informed about the fact that we have a some kind of laziness in lyrics. And all the speed, cocaine and marihuana we indeed found throughout the Red Light District in Amsterdam.

Definitely a gig from Last Days of Humanity… No, I think it was a live porn show or that coprophiliac act somewhere in this country. No, it was that show from gay worshippers Stoma. What these guys do on stage… the horror… Oh sorry, Fedde (391)

Yep, we did several gigs with Stoma. And that says enough… (of niet, Fedde).

The best metal show was of course Stoma playing and rehearsing in their van. The best gig I played was at Fuck The Commerce.

I think the tribute to Carcass is a good step for Deathvomit Records. They released finally a CD that I like. I don’t think that we had done an even better cover, so I really don’t care. The best songs for me are the Dead Infection, Regurgitate and Disgorge ones.

Alright, I have some tasty pictures of you and your friend. I think I had it from the singer of Stoma. He gave me them because he had some new pictures so he gave me the old ones from you, but I immediately gave that pictures to the bass player of Stoma. He was surprised…

Nice one Teufel! I think it’s because of Erwin who’s still in LDOH….

Good question. We have t-shirts at Bones Brigade and CDs! The split EP with CBT is on Fleshfeast Records and me. The split with Morgue is on Evil Biker Records and me. The split with Stoma I released. See for the address (on) the Hymns Of…. CD. New shirts will be on Bones Brigade and I heard, as far as maybe they are rumors, that someone is going to print a t-shirt from the split with CBT. The prizes are as high as possible, because we want to be as rich as Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, Gore and Intestinal Disgorge.

You are a funny guy Teufel, maybe we can date sometime in the near future? Stay sick, baby.

Ricey: Ok then, our latest CD, Avagoyamugs, was released by the sick and insane Razorback Records. We were waiting for our 200 Intense Hammer Rage CDs that Razorback sent airmail (freaking out because our CDs were a month late!!!) thinking that the package went missing we were wondering “what the fuck?”. Little did we fuckin’ know, the Burnie Customs intercepted our CDs and were planning to raid my house, because of the nature of our lyrics. I guess they were thinking I had a kiddie porno ring going on or fuckin’ something. So at 7 in the morning (you were close!!!) I had a loud persistent knock on the door, thinking “who in the fuck was this cunt?”. I opened the door to find custom officials with search warrants, police, forensics, and god knows who else barging there way in!!! I didn’t know what the fuck was going on! Being that early in the morning and without a strong coffee, or beer, I was like “huh, who the fuck are you cunts again?”. (laughs) Anyway, they searched the whole house for about 3 hours and all they found was some CDs they felt were too offensive and some paperwork that basically links us with Razorback Records and shit for evidence and a buttslapping mag! They must have been so fucking disappointed. So while I was escorted to the cop shop Chris was being raided and they took heaps of band shit like lyrics, artwork, and even his computer. Unfortunately they also found a shitload of pot, bongs and stuff. Last up they raided A.B.’s house and took 7 years of band stuff. They fuckin’ took all of it! Everything from lyrics, artwork, photos, posters and heaps of shit. Again they took pot and bongs and shit. We all were escorted to the police station to do a video interview and statements and bollocks. At the moment we are waiting to be charged by the police and I’m also gonna be charged by customs (because the Avagoyamugs CD were addressed to me). So our CDs are banned in Australia. How fucked, aye?

Ricey: Yea, I did, they cried out “No, No, No!!!” but all I wanted was cake! They all want cake!!!! (laughs)

Ricey: Well, they took all the Intense Hammer Rage CDs, including Devogrindporngorecoreaphile and Gory B CDs. Out of my personal collection they took Last Days Of Humanity CDs and Cock And Ball Torture CDs (because they mention pedophile or bestiality references) and they also took CDs and vinyl from Slut Kunting Whore Distro. So fuck man, what can I say? It’s fucked up shit!

Ricey: Oh definitely my Slim Dusty CD, man! With classic songs “A Pub With No Beer” and “I’m Gunna Ava Beer With Duncan (Cause Duncan’s My Mate)” and shit. But they fuckin’ took it from me because of the underlying pedophile references and apparently it sends skitzos like me into mad, uncontrollable fits of extreme violence! I never want this disc back again. I am way too ashamed of the graphic violence it depicts! (laughs)

Ricey: We all live in separately in our own houses. It would be rather fuckin’ gay if we shared the one house. But anyway, they raided all 3 of our houses, the fuckin’ cunts.

Ricey: Fuck, I don’t know, I guess they were expecting to find pedophile photos, videos and maybe a 7 year old kid molested and locked in a fuckin’ cupboard or something ridiculous. All they found was my cumstained silk panties, and a “How To Wank Like A Pro Instruction Manual For Beginners.”

Ricey: Well man, after some of the full on fuckin’ articles in the newspapers and shit linking us with pedophile lyrics and shit, I was definitely concerned with the general reaction. Surprisingly though, everyone’s been really fuckin’ cool about it and think that it sucks that we’ve been singled out as sickos. Everyone who knows us, whether its family or friends or whatever, know us as fuckin’ mellow, normal drug smokin’ yobbo cunts who are dedicated in the arts of playing brutal and extreme grind! If anyone thinks differently, then you’re fucked!

Ricey: The amount of people who have written or e-mailed us saying that they totally support us is fuckin’ amazing. No one has written to use to have whinge. The support everyone has shown means a fuckin’ lot. It goes to show how fuckin’ excellent the extreme underground scene is! Everyone seems to wanna support and help each other out, rather than bad mouth each other and carry on like faggots! The underground rules like fuck!

Ricey: I’ve suspected their uncanny supernatural powers for quite a while now. Your questions now confirm their superhero powers, but will they use it for good or evil? If they use it for the good of mankind, I think the only option is to stone ‘em to death. If not then let’s get ‘em stoned to death?!?!?!?! (laughs) Long live pot!

Ricey: I’m sorry bro, but it’s fuckin’ true! It’s a fucked country. Don’t come here unless you’re a junkie. There are some seriously fucked up laws over here, but it is actually a pretty cool place to live. There’s not too much crime, and if you don’t work out you get unemployment benefits, and if you get caught with pot, you just get a warning. Also, Australia invented the 4 litre wine cask, and that’s a fuckin’ life force for me! But yea, the fuckin’ fuss made about us goregrinders is pretty fucked up when junkies and shit are encouraged, or so it seems.

Ricey: (laughs) That’s a fuckin ripsnorter of an album title! You’re a fuckin’ genius! It would be humorous as fuck to use that title, but we would never be able to sell another CD in Australia again! Actually, our next mini-CD that will be out on Life Fluid Productions will be entitled The Ex-Philes. We are moving on and writing about other sick subjects. I think we have had enough of writing about pedophilia and shit. Don’t worry you hardcore perverts, we will still be sick and offensive!

A.B.: Well, umm… “The Third Of Five”? Okay, well guys, it’s like this. In the July 1997 issue of Australian Playboy (with Emma Harrison, of ex-Neighbours fame) there’s a depiction of Ken and Barbie shagging in a position known as “The Tree Trunk” (or more humorously, as I found in Anne Hoopers Kama Sutra “The Fitter-In”). So being adventurous by nature, I tried it out with my willing (consenting, and of legal age, I might add!) girlfriend. During the act, she leans back until I think I might snap and she squeals “fuck, put your hand here, check this shit out!” Lo and behold, with my hand above her pubic mound (no pubes, but…) I could feel my knob trying to burst free like some alien cystoid, and, be fucked! I could see it too! (No shit, try it out!) So, I instantly, thought the obvious, “what if she was a petite 9 year old girly-thing, and I had a knob the size of a really, really big baby’s arm? Pop!!! Right? Maybe even through her flat chest?

Ricey: There ya go, we now know A.B.’s girlfriend has a shaven muff! And A.B. can’t be too experienced if he got that old classic from a book, huh?

Ricey: Ok, Teufel, I’m gonna get serious and quite in depth with this answer. First off, I have an 8-year-old son that I am in contact with on a regular basis and my girlfriend has two kids. If anyone comes near or touches these kids in a violating way, I would personally beat the livin’ shit out of them. If anyone out there accuses me of not knowing what its like to have kids and read our lyrics, think again. We (Intense Hammer Rage) have got some of the most extreme shocking lyrics ever written, but we also play some of the most extreme music ever written. This goes hand in hand. It would be fuckin’ stupid to have an extreme-as-fuck death/grind band writing poop music lyrics and equally stupid is to have a pop band writing pathological gore lyrics. It doesn’t mix. Therefore, we are gonna write extreme lyrics, but everything extreme has been done in one way or another, so we took a huge risk and wrote some lyrics on topics so taboo that even the most extreme-as-fuck band haven’t touched. The topic is pedophilia and violence towards women and children. The lyrics we have written has caused quite a stir, I must say. the reason that pedophiles are such a taboo subject is that they (pedophiles) are the most perverse, putrid and fuckin’ sick cunts out there. They might even be someone you know and least expect, it could be your neighbour, your local fuckin’ priest or even your dad! In fact, the most likely person to get away with it will be a role model figure in your community, and they get away with it by buying (or threatening) your silence for you to forget. So, people, if we forget and ignore that these unspeakable, vile acts happen we are letting ‘em get away with it, don’t ya think? So, fair enough, we have shocked some people by our full on in-your-face extreme lyrics, but they also make you think and it forces you to react! It’s better to react to some topic you are offended by than fuckin’ ignore the harsh realities of life. By accepting and realizing these perverted acts happen, we have a better chance of preventing it. Of fuckin’ course we don’t condone pedophilia and violence towards women and children. For fuck sake, we aren’t the sick cunts, we are authors who describe the actions of the extreme perverted realities that happen all the time. Watch the news and current affairs shows, read the newspapers, read books, there’s sick shit there that defies logic. I have read books purchased from bookstores that have so much fuckin’ profanity and perverseness and totally suck shit in it they almost make our lyrics seem tame. Apparently that’s okay, but a fuckin’ dedicated death/grind act who is trying to make a name for themselves in a tiny fuckin’ underground scene is a fuckin’ crime! I mean, fuck, how many people would read a book about Jeffrey Dahmer and think “fuck the author was a sick cunt”??? So why do people assume we, in Intense Hammer Rage, are sick? What’s the difference?

Ricey: Yea, it’s a funny fuckin’ sample. We got it from “Strangers With Candy”. It’s a US comedy done by the makers of South Park. I’m quite sure you’ve heard of it.

Ricey: Oh deary fuckin’ me. Are you, Teufel and Leon del Muerte, the biggest and shameless faggots in the whole fuckin’ world? How dare you cunts bag off the gore-riffic efforts behind the “mastermuthafuckinpiece” of artwork known simply as Avagoyamugs? I don’t shamefully refuse to put my name to the credit of creating this fuckin’ gore-rate piece of insane artwork. Seriously, I find your and Leon’s comments strange because you freaks are the only people, so far, to not like the cover artwork. Everyone who has fuckin’ written to us have loved the artwork and the layout so…??? Would you prefer if we got yet another blurry gore pic off the internet and used that instead, like billions of other bands? Huh???

Ricey: Well man, I haven’t heard of T666, but I’ve no doubt they are faggots who deserve a good poofter bashing! And as for Mortification, yea… they’re a bit of a fuckin’ lost cause, but I won’t waste too much energy baggin’ on them.

Ricey: It seems to be quite good at the moment. There definitely is a lot of new and very brutal death/grind puking up all over the place! It’s fucking great to see. A few bands I wanna plug are Omnium Gatherum, Miscreation, Volatile, Psycroptic, M.S.I., Butchered Cunt, Fuck… I’m Dead!, Excruciate, Filthy Maggot Cunt and Captain Cleanoff.

Ricey: No man, it was all a fuckin’ joke! It was bad enough being on TV. The way everyone carried on like fuckin’ pork chops was an embarrassment. We Aussies aren’t normally like that!!! We are pot bellied, beer drinking, loud mouthed, Sheila rooting yobbo cunts.

Ricey: We will most definitely get charged and fined. The maximum sentence is 12 months in jail, but, fortunately, that will be very unlikely, so rest assured our assholes will be used only for the purpose of shitting, as our rectal passages were designed for!!!

Ricey: Well, apart from smoking and drinking too much and wearing out the skin of our fucklogs on tight fitting vaginal walls, we have nearly finished writing all new songs for our upcoming mini CD mentioned earlier. We are also planning heaps of gigs for the near future. Chris and me are also starting a webzine/printed fanzine soon, so that will take up a bit of time. As for t-shirts, Mike from Flesh Feast Productions (Spain) is printing two designs of Intense Hammer Rage shirts, and also re-releasing Gory B with new artwork and layout and our Massive Sphinta Release demo as a bonus at the end of the CD. These projects should be available any time now, so get in contact with Mike. As for anti-customs officials t-shirt, if there’s any label out there wanting to print ‘em, we will be all too willing to design ‘em! Intense Hammer Rage are more brutal than ever and, yea, the fuckin’ trail of terror has only just begun. I really want to fuckin’ thank everyone who has stayed true and supported us. I want to thank you, Teufel, for the cool interview and your support and kind words toward IHR is fucking much appreciated ya cunt! (laughs) Anyone who wants to talk grind with us or want to send promo material to be reviewed (and possibly interviewed) for our zine, please contact us!

Sascha:Hah, you think that’s the silliest name you’ve ever heard yet? Well, it’s cool ’cause you’re the very first one saying that… (laughs) "Sascha And The Shiteaters" sounds cool as well, but the short form would be like STS, and we have already a very famous band here in Europe with that name and they’re into folk-songs and shit like that so I think we chose the best. Honestly I have never given any thought about if it may sound silly or something, we just like it, and it fits to the music we play. Have you ever thought about "Teufel’s Tomb"? Nothing more to add…

We are not that much into porn someone may expect, we don’t watch porn movies all day long or something, that’ll be boring. Of course we like porn but who doesn’t? I can’t give you any recommendations ’cause the movies I know have German titles and I’m sure you won’t understand it. Besides that, we don’t want to be limited as a "porn band" and shit like that. We are dealing with obscene things like bondage, latex and sadomaso, and sometimes animals, but it is just some fun for us! We don’t take those things too serious, but a lot of people out there definitely do. Playing gore-grind today means that you have to deal with porn and stuff, that’s the way a lot of people think but that’s narrow minded. We don’t want to be called a "porn band" ’cause we aren’t but it is up to them.

Well, some friend of mine gave me a tape with tons of obscene stuff on it and the most disgusting flick was the one with animal sex… dogs… wow! Chicks getting screwed by real HUGE dogs! That’s really sick ’cause they really enjoyed it. That definitely not the thing I’m into although we deal with animal sex concerning some of our songs but it is just for fun. Long live sodomy and lust!

Eric, it was just awesome! Probably the best thing we’ve ever experienced yet! It was just fantastic. Tons of sick bands and hundreds of sickos! I felt like (I was) in paradise! (laughs) We are really honoured that Brian and Ablated gave us the chance to play at the Deathfest! It was like a dream to have a gig someday in the States and I didn’t believe that it would be so easy, really crazy! We would love to do more gigs over there but it is all just a question of time and money. About the sick fucks, it is totally different compared to Germany, or better the European crowd. Most of the European freaks do some headbanging and perhaps some little moshpit, the others just stand there like they’re in military. So we were really overwhelmed by the reactions and the behaviour of the American crowds. I have never seen those moshpits in my life! They behave like animals! Imagine two rhinoceros defending their territories, nearly the same. We were no longer interested to watch the band actually playing ’cause that was more interesting. We had another gig in Columbus the following day with Prophecy (dirty fucking whores) and about 20 people were there but they behaved like if there were 100. I joined the moshpit a little when Prophecy played, I lost my shoes and I needed like 30 minutes to relax. (laughs) Pretty funny as well. It is just amazing, I wish the European crowd would be the same. About Cleveland, well I can’t tell you anything about it, sorry we just spent those days inside the Ablated store. (laughs) There was always some party going on.

It’s hard to say ’cause I play the drums and I really don’t concentrate on the crowd. I just saw some pics taken during our gig from different people. I think it was pretty cool. I asked our vocalist about the reactions of the crowd and he said that it was great. I don’t really know, I hope I’ll get some video footage soon, lots of people promised me that. The only thing I can remember is that a lot of people even knew some song titles and were screaming for those, that shows that were some grind freaks as well between those death maniacs. The reactions were really great and it was a success to play there. I think there are some more freaks now in the States interested in CBT, and gore-grind in general and that’s what this country needs! MORE GORE!

Huh? I can’t believe someone’s saying that. We were totally satisfied with everything. Brian Baxter did a wonderful job, everything was organized very well, there were no problems at all and I don’t know of any band being ripped off. We would definitely return to bring more gore-havoc upon those sickos! We would love to do more gigs in the states, a tour would be perfect. I hope that we can do it one day before we have to split, we’ll see. Like I said in the beginning, it was one of the best things we’ve ever experienced.

Ahh… time for revenge! (laughs) Just kidding. Well, my faves were Prophecy… Gods! One of the few bands I really wanted to see live, and God blessed us to have another gig with them! Gorgasm, Severe Torture… I had the chance to see many cool bands during those two days I would have to wait for years to see them in Europe like Deeds Of Flesh, Regurgitation (hail Brian, Dan and Steve!) Unfortunately Fleshgrind didn’t play, that sucked. To be honest I can’t tell you any band which blew ass, all of them were pretty cool. Honestly! Of course I didn’t like all of them, that’s not possible, but there wasn’t any real bad one. We had the chance to meet lots of cool people over there (by the way : thanks to Amanda and Chris for being our drivers, you rule!) from different bands like the ones from Exhumed, Prophecy, Deeds Of Flesh, Aborted… they are from Europe as well, but we never met so far. Lividity and lots of others, all of them were nice and it was a pleasure for us to hang out with them. I’ll never forget about it.

Well, that’s hard to say. We have a festival in Germany called "Fuck The Commerce" and bands like Mortician, Skinless, Exhumed, Cryptopsy and others have already played there. About 1000 people have visited this festival every year, so it can be compared to the deathfest. I don’t know, if it would be the same line-up, I guess about 2000 people would appear, not more. We have really big festivals here in Germany as well with more then 20,000 visitors, even up to 30,000 and 50,000, but they don’t deal with underground music. Many BIG bands are playing there, even Mortician, Nasum and Deceased will play at this years Wacken Open Air. That’s really a monster big festival. That’s it…

HELL YEAH! The scene is really big here in Europe and especially in Germany. There are a lot of metalheads around. I would say that the biggest scene for grind/gore/death is definitely in Europe, but that’s just logic ’cause Europe breeds by far the best grind/gore bands. Compared to that, America offers the best death bands, so both styles of extreme music are pretty famous. I would say they are even kind of familiar. The only label based in the US which has an office in Europe is Relapse and it is placed in, guess where? Germany. That’s the only one I know, there can be others, too I have never heard of them.

The split with Last Days Of Humanity is already out now, on 7" white vinyl on Fleshfeast Productions in Spain. This release was meant to be released back in ‘99, even before the Opus(sy) VI album, but due to different problems, it has delayed for more than one year, but we’re still happy that it was finally released and we’re very confident with it. The songs featured on that 7" were recorded during the Opus(sy) VI sessions, they just didn’t find their way onto the album. Right after we recorded the album we started doing new compositions for a planed split with Libido Airbag which was released on Bones Brigade Productions in France in fall 2000 on MCD, and this year even on purple vinyl as a limited 7" EP edition of 300 copies. During that time we already recorded some cover songs for a 4-way split CD with Filth, Downthroat and N.C.C. That was finally released in March this year on Bizarre Leprous Productions. In January 2001 we entered a local studio to record 4 brand new songs for a split mCD with Disgorge (mex) which was meant to be released already in March but it has delayed until now. I hope it’ll cum soon! It’ll be released as digi-pack format on Lofty Storm Records in Brazil. Watch out! That’s it so far… ahh, I forgot, the Split 7" EP CBT/LDOH will be released on mCD format too pretty soon on Unmatched Brutality.

I can’t tell you why there are more vinyl than CDs. Of course more people own CD players than record players and I’m sure much more copies could be sold, but I think it is a kind of natural thing to do 7" instead of CD ’cause it is "more underground", know what I mean? When we started doing splits nobody even thought about doing an mCD. I really don’t know why but it is pretty usual. But during the last two years many labels here in Europe stopped doing 7"s anymore ’cause it has become too expensive and doing the same shit on CD is sometimes much cheaper. A lot of labels and distros care a lot about doing trades and it is easier to trade CDs than EPs. I must say that I totally love vinyl! I prefer doing a split on vinyl than on mCD, there’s a certain feeling I can’t describe when you have this split (on vinyl) in your hands. It is even harder to get those 7" EPs ’cause everyone can dub CDs today and the whole feeling to "collect" the stuff is missing. I hope those labels continue to do splits on vinyl ’cause that keeps the real underground alive! It is cult. But I also like CDs, of course. I would never release a full length just on vinyl, like I said just the splits. CDs are the best way to present a full length, but there can be a vinyl version of that too. Like we do it. There will be a 12" LP version of Opus(sy) VI with a red cover this time. New inlay and shit. First 300 copies will be made in pussy-pink vinyl, to be out in August or September on Deepsend Records.

Thanks for your compliments, bro. Really great that you prefer our song on the compilation. As I talked about that compilation with Billy/Razorback and our participation he asked me about the track we wanted to cover. I didn’t knew so far, so I listened to Ultimo Mondo Cannibale and thought that "Red Wigglers" would be perfect and no one else wanted to do that song so far, so we did it. It was the one and only songs I liked from that album so there was really nothing to choose. (laughs) When the compilation was out I got a letter form Dan of Impetigo and he said that it was the very first time he heard that song with double-pedals ’cause he didn’t use any of them and he really liked it. I think we did the cover pretty cool although it has nothing to do with the original song anymore but we wanted to do it CBT-like. I think it turned out pretty sick. I told you already about the 4-way split CD, well, we just have cover songs on that. We did covers of Last Days Of Humanity, Nasum, Squash Bowels, Suppository and Gut. They turned out really cool!

Nobody ever asked us about contributing a song for that tribute but be sure, we would have loved to do a cover of Carcass for that compilation. I don’t know if they asked LDOH to take part, but I don’t care about such things. It shows that they don’t know about us so they can’t ask us. Perhaps they don’t like CBT, who knows? I just know that Matt from Exhumed is a big fan of CBT and he worked for the tribute concerning the bands which appeared on it. Like I said, I don’t really care. Well, I think this release is pretty good although there are really few bands doing good covers. I really prefer the covers from Impaled, Exhumed and Rotten Sound, those bands show a certain respect to Carcass in a way, you know? The songs they did are really sick and well played, the other songs featured on that CD are really weak, the Gods of Carcass would have deserved some better stuff, but that’s just my opinion. I don’t know if we would have done a better job at all ’cause we never tried to do a Carcass cover, but I think we’ll do a cover song of Carcass one day, especially for you Eric. (laughs) We’ll see. It’ll probably be released on a split 7" EP one day so you’ll never get it ’cause it seems you prefer CDs, so you’ll never hear it. (laughs)

Yeah, I heard about it and Jill at Razorback told me the whole story. That’s really stupid and totally unnecessary. That’s the world we live in… (laughs) But that’s just not typical for Australia, it is the same all around the world. We have a lot of troubles on the borders to Czech Republic, Poland, etc. It seems that everyone cares about that instead of taking care on "real" problems. I don’t want to talk about that anymore ’cause I already wasted too much time with talking about those stupid things with lots of people. Sorry for that Eric, but I’m really pissed off with all this censorship, customs, confiscation. The idea you had ’bout doing that compilation would be just awesome! (laughs) That’s one of the best things I’ve heard for a while, totally sick and deviated! You rule! (laughs) Wonderful! Be sure, we would take part on that compilation, and perhaps I would even write lyrics for that song. (laughs) Save some money!

Well, the mCD is sold out now for a while, we sold about 1600 copies. We did the first edition, about 600, on our own and Shredded Records did another 1000. The Opus(sy) VI CD was released in summer last year and until now about 2000 copies were sold. It is okay but it could be much more, so you can still get it. This CD has never sold out yet. I know that it is pretty hard to find our stuff in USA and Canada and that’s why we need more distribution there. Some people already told me that they can’t find our shit in your country and in the States. I really hope that’ll change soon, we’ll see. We do have new shirts right now! We did some on our own again, limited to 200 copies, they’ll be posted on our website soon! Someone in Czech Republic and Poland did some shirts too, but those ones are really hard to get. I just have some for our own use, all info will be featured on our website. I’m sorry Eric, the long sleeves are completely sold out. I don’t know if we ever make some again, we’ll see…

Actually nothing, ’cause that shows that they are fags! People calling us Gut rip-offs have nothing to do with that kind of music. They don’t know what they are talking about. The only similar thing with Gut is – we live in Germany. (laughs) That’s it faggots! Wank yourself and eat your dog’s shit.

SOON! (laughs) We will record the second full length in the end of August at Subzero Studios, where we recorded the last album, so await some real killer sound quality for your ultimate pleasure! It is by far the best stuff we ever did. I think it’ll be released by the end of this year, watch out! So that’s all for the near future, no more splits planed yet ’cause we have a couple of them already, we’ll see… We just concentrate on the next album right now.

First of all, ass-paddling mega-thanx for that intie Eric. You rule! And thanks for your patience with me. To all you sickfucks out there, SUPPORT THE UNDERGRIND! …and buy our releases. Watch out for 2nd full length album of Cock And Ball Torture by the end of 2001!

Joe: I chose the name after some disturbing image that was in my head after a bit of daydreaming. I had an image in my head of a flag from every country laid down into the dirt and on top of each flag was a dead child from that country who died for some pathetic reason. The flags were in a huge circle, hence the name, Circle of Dead Children. We stuck with that moniker because we thought it could work well for us for a few reasons; it’s screwed up enough that most people remember it, it’s meaning fits the lyric scheme, and because it could generate questions like this one that I’m answering!

I’ve always liked to write and I knew that there would be no way that I was going to contribute to the stereotype that metal bands have stupid lyrics. The way I see it, there is a world of influence out there, so why not use it? There is no one theme to my lyrics. There have been a few songs dealing with my belief that as humans we’re all programmed with some subconscious goal of global annihilation. That’s pretty much the theme for our next record which we just finished recording, The Genocide Machine. I also have written about depression, love lost, economics, separation of Church and State, free thought, the self-oppressive work system, and a ton of other random shit.

You are definitely a genius! I see all religion as a means for self-degradation and just a way to weaken your own free-thinking capabilities. I think it’s all pathetic. I think it’s a shame that we’re to the point that so many people have to rely on faith and fear to make their decisions in life. I grew up in a house of very devout Roman Catholics and was raised to discard reason and logic in favor or faith. Well for me that just doesn’t work. On one end, I think that if worshiping a microwave causes you to live a better life for both you and others, then so be it. But the other side of me just thinks it’s a shame that so many people feel they have to worship anything, be a microwave or a god-figure, to live life well.

To each his own I guess. I just think most of it’s boring and repetitive, that’s all. It’s been done a zillion times over and it’s totally lost it’s shock value that made it cool in the beginning. It just makes me appreciate the people who take the time to write about more worthwhile topics a bit more. I listen to a ton of bands that have terrible lyrics, but it’s the ones who are not only strong musically but lyrically as well whom I most admire.

Oh yeah, I totally agree. I think too many people take themselves too seriously. It’s just a big turnoff to me to see shit like that. I think we’re about as non-uptight as you could be. Hell, at one of our last shows we did a raffle drawing with the crowd and gave away things such as glow-in-the-dark dildos, Playgirl, Playboy, cookie-cutters, styrofoam airplanes, etc. Our new bassist, Alf, is notorious for his sick-ass "poop tricks" and Ben, our new guitarist, is known for taking a megaphone to shows to yell at the bands! I just couldn’t handle being in a band that acted like a bunch of tight-asses… you have to have fun.

Oh shit, no he didn’t go to college there. He’s Berkley taught for drumming. He went there for a while to study drumming to aid in learning different approaches and techniques. He goes to school in Philadelphia, which is about 5 hours from the rest of us.

He slammed his cock into a car door and his hair has been that way ever since. No real science, just auto-to-cock dynamics.

Yeah, that picture was the first real painting that I ever did. I messed around on a few pieces to get used to the way the paint blended and dried and stuff like that, and then I did the cover piece. I used all acrylics for it, which was a real pain in the ass to work with. We were looking around for somebody to do a cover for us for a while, but the only people that we could find wanted a ridiculous amount of money. So, as time dragged on, I figured that I would just go buy some paints and brushes and do it myself… and that’s where the name, "Cost of Impatience" comes from.

Originally those 7 songs were to be used as one side of a split 12" with some Canadian band, Maharahj. Well it seemed as if they were never going to record their songs, so we decided just to use those songs for an EP and cancel the split. The EP became Exotic Sense Decay. The other main delays came from too asshole douchers who completely wasted our time by saying they would do the layout and design, but never did shit. Pisser #1, the piece of shit that he is, held on to all the stuff I sent him for the layout for several months and did nothing, nor did he have the decency to even write and say that he hadn’t done any work on it. The asshole even said that he lost the print of the painting that I sent. He wouldn’t respond to any e-mails or anything and the guy who runs Robodog Records finally was able to contact him by phone. Wanker #2, another piss cunt, pretty much mimicked the lazy behaviors of the first, even though he requested to do it! The reason I don’t print their names is because each of them are in bands, one fairly well known and on a big flavor of the day label, and I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of having their names printed. It all turned out for the best in the end I think, and Willowtip released the CD EP and Robodog released it on a 7" picture disc.

Yeah, Exotic Sense Decay was a total rush job. Actually, everything we’ve recorded so far [Starving The Vultures, Exotic Sense Decay and The Genocide Machine] have been written, practiced and recorded quickly. Our drummer, as I stated earlier, goes to school 5 hours away. The only time we can write songs is during summer break and a little bit during winter break. He comes home about once every 3 months for the rest of the year and we just try to stay smooth with what we have.

It’s really not difficult for us at all. When we began we all talked about what we wanted and planned on using the different influences as a positive, not a negative. Everyone is pretty supportive of one another. I mean there is a sound we’re shooting for, but it’s broad and not fixated to any one genre type. The only time that we throw parts out or decide that we don’t want to use a part is because it may ruin the flow of the song, not because "it’s not brooootal enough, dude!"

Yeah, I’ve read some comparisons where I’ve had to do a double or triple take. But hey, it’s all opinions and tastes and even I can’t say that they are wrong or right in their comparisons. I’m just happy that they took the time to listen. I guess I would describe us as free-thinking death/grind with a focus on freedom of song structure and development… or, anything-goes core.

We all tend to hate playing on the stages and to be honest, I lose a ton of emotion up there. It just feels stupid being way above everyone else. We like to play on the floor, right down there with the fans. I’ve lost a ton of blood at shows, bitten people, got punched, dry-humped people, sat on people, broke a ton of mics, etc. I think shows shouldn’t be such a pretty nice place and feeling. I remember seeing bands when I was very young and being fucking scared shitless at times that I wasn’t going to make it out alive. That’s what I like… that’s what I would like to see come back. It’s good when the crowd has a sense of awareness and knows that they have to stay on their toes. It’s not about actually intentionally hurting anybody, but giving off the feeling of being unsure of what is coming next. People are paying to see you, so I think that you people should leave with some memories.

Right now there isn’t a whole lot going on, but I must say that there are a few really decent bands, but they tend to play more toward the hardcore crowd than the metal crowd. The two scenes are pretty divided here, and it’s pathetic. There are some seriously decent bands that the metal crowd would really dig, but since they don’t all look like your cookie-cutter metal bands, they don’t get any attention. And then the hardcore-type kids only involvement in metal is going to shows to see the big-name bands. Fuck, it’s music, you know? Just go and open up and experience some new shit and build from it… that’s the way I see it.

We’re really close right now to move up to a new level. We’ve been in negotiations since August with a couple labels and I’ve been spending a lot of time gathering up the positives and negatives from each situation and then seeing where we sit in the middle of it all. I plan on finalizing our choice by December.

Haha! I thought Carcass were a good band too.

Myself with a digital camcorder set up on a tripod and broadcast live via the Internet. Thanks for the interview, bro! Best of luck with Teufel’s Nipple.

Yeah, as you said, we decided to go with Necropolis/Deathvomit Records. They seemed to be a bit more in-tune with what we wanted right now as a band. I just sensed a good vibe with those guys from the start. They are picking up some crushing bands right now so we’re really amped to be a part of it.

Those guys left for different reasons. With Dave, it was more of a quit or be thrown out. We just weren’t feeling the bond with him strongly anymore and it seemed that his interests weren’t directed to the band too much anymore. It was a bit sour at first, but things have cooled down now between he and us. We replaced Dave right away with Alfie, a guy who Jason and myself had been in prior bands with. He’s a great bass player, has an awesome dedication and is seriously one sick ass poop-trick making bastard. It was hard for us to watch Jon go, as we all really liked him and appreciated his involvement with us. His musical interests had really gone a different direction and he wasn’t "feeling it" anymore with this type of stuff. We still hang out with Jon and things are very cool between us all. We’ve tried out a couple of people for second guitar, but none have been adequate yet. For now we’re moving along as a 4-piece.

Breaking The Law was a landmark in pure savage brutality and pagan hatred for mankind, so we don’t even attempt to come close to such a sacred record. As far as how it compares to our previous releases, it’s a bit more death metal in sound overall. That’s just what happened. Not as many really short songs this time around. The Circle Of Dead Children sound is totally there, however, just the format has changed a little bit. We’re all really happy with it. The vocals have gotten sicker and the drumming is all over the place.

Holy shit, you know about that? I’m an emotional support counselor for K-12 kids. Not sure how long that will last though… I love what I do and the kids are great, but the "professional" workplace just isn’t for me. Jon is still in college 5 hours away in Philadelphia. Jason is out of college and spends his days finding the best free teen-porn sites on the net. Alf has worked more jobs than anyone I’ve known. He just doesn’t give a shit about any of that stuff and he quits jobs all the time. Right now he’s laid off and spends most of his time plotting sick ass poop-tricks and ways to get himself into the police-report of all the local newspapers.

Well, since Jon is so far away, we rarely practice (every 3-4 months) and the only time we’re able to record is in the summer. That’s when we do all the writing and the recording. During his Christmas break we were able to write 8 new songs in 2 practices. That was great for us because now it takes some stress off us in the summer. We got an early jump on it this time.

You can get in line to suck my cock, for starters. And then you can hit up the website and keep abreast of what’s for sale and how to get it. Girls who grace us with some breast shots get their choice of merch for free.

Yeah, we’ll be going out towards the end of July and into August. I’m not sure how extensive it will be this time due to a lot of conflicts with work. I’m at a point in my life where I’m willing to quit my current job and take a less restrictive one in order to tour and focus more on our rock-n-roll. But some of us just can’t do that right now, and that’s understandable. As for Ohio Death Fest, I will most certainly be there again this year. I can’t wait to see Cock And Ball Torture as well! Vomit Remnants were great the last time they played. That kid who does Satan’s God is fucked. It should be mandatory for him to play every fest. I just totally can’t understand the cock-hate. He should do some spoken word performances about where his hatred for the cock comes from.

I don’t have the time to answer this question right now; can you please leave it with my press agent? Maybe we can hook up at the Necropolis Yacht Club this summer to talk about things… I’ll bring the caviar; you bring Satan’s God.

Ares: Greetings to you all, I thank you for your compliments. Morrigan has quit Aeternus because of different reasons, she was tired of the scene with its struggles and she felt that she had been through enough of it. Not much more to say really, Aeternus will march on ahead at full speed and we have already a session-bassist working for us. I will personally do the bass in studio next time, a challenge I am more than ready for.

Like I said, we have now a session bassist, V’gandr of Helheim. For piano and synth stuff, I’ll do some shit myself, but for more complex playing I would need help from a more "skilled" person. There won’t be a problem to fix these things up as I now many that could help us out here. Also, if I asked Morrigan to help out on some studio stuff, she would probably say yes. There’s no bad blood between her and Aeternus and she wants the best for us so…

Morrigan would maybe lose a physical fight. However, being a Witch she can Fuck Up your mind and life severely if she wants to. At the end she would win.

We tune in C. Our equipment is Peavey Bandit 115 through JCM 900 Marshall-amps. This increases the distortion from the Peavey in a high degree and then we rule. We use Jackson guitars with EMG pick-ups. Morrigan used an ESP bass with EMG pick-ups on Ascension Of Terror.

I play all the acoustic guitars.

The sound was changed on Shadows Of Old because of different things. I used other guitars than before this time and it was on Shadows… I started to use the Marshall as power-amplifier for the Peavey. Also, we worked harder and longer than before with the sound. It was a success as we all can hear on that album. The sound is as before in my opinion, only a whole of a lot better. We did not change our style. We added some death ‘n thrash riffs/elements in a few songs and it gave that album a good feel. On Ascension Of Terror we have used these elements a lot, one can call this new album a death metal album. We’ve wanted to do this for a long time and it felt good and right to do so. Ascension… is a brutal, fast and pounding opus, which is much more to the point than before. Dark extremities all the way. We’re not turning into death metal, that’s important to know. Our new material is more "Aeternus", and we’ll use piano, acoustic guitars and synthesizer for darkened atmospheres on our next album for sure. We’ll take ourselves back in time a bit. The death/thrash elements will be present, but the in general we will concentrate on doing more original and darkened stuff again.

We had Aeternus and decided that was what we wanted to do, basically, that’s the reason why we quit.

We felt we need a permanent guitarist for tours and we need new blood in the band. He was for sure the right choice. Highly dedicated and full of passion for Aeternus, he was a great fan before he joined so he’s 100% all the way. Radek writes music and so far I have used his riffs for inspiration only, it’s not easy for him to get into the style 100%. He has written some lyrics that are great.

Our lyrics deal with darkened things, a darkness we define in our own way. I don’t do research or anything for inspiration to my lyrics. The bare essence of War, Pride and Honor, the power of the nature and its elements… emotions that is highly appealing to me helps me to write my lyrics.

If one cannot find merchandise, I guess the smartest thing is to contact Hammerheart Records. They got the stuff there at least; I don’t know what they got in stock these days.

Usually they get into it all, maybe not truly as in freakin’ out like motherfucker, but most of them like what we do.

It’s up to Hammerheart to send us into North America and so forth. We’re always ready for touring as we fuckin’ love doing it. Aeternus is a live-band for sure. It would be cool to tour with Morbid Angel and Immortal. That’s something I personally want to do.

No, not at all. I like Rignes.

Budweiser is good, Fosters maybe… I like beer as long as it’s beer and not thinned out with fucking water.

Oh man, you bring back bad ass memories with that question. It’s so ugly not being able to shower after a show. I think we went for 3 days once, which was bad!

Oh, there are sooo many people I would like to shoot in the scene man. I’ll get shot myself I guess if I mention names here so that I won’t fuckin’ do. I hate false people in the metal-scene, people who do not do their job, un-dedicated people, back-stabbers and so forth. I could make a long list, but that’s not necessary.

Metal is metal, as long as it’s done properly, it’s cool. I have to say that I don’t like much bands though, you gotta be really fucking great if you want me to like your band as there are so many, many, MANY bad bands out there in my opinion. Few bands got what it takes man, know it.

Well, that was a weird question. No, I’m happy with what I got. Aeternus is my supergroup! Alright man, I thank you for this interview and for your support.

Teufel: My real name is not Eric Crookes, as many have been led to believe. I am really Tito Jackson, brother of Michael and LaToya. After over 50 surgeries I look like a balding 22 year old white Canadian with a small penis. In the coming years I hope to have the appearance of Jackie Chan, or possibly OddJob from Goldfinger.

Rob Halford has begun work on a new band and Elton John is in Spain getting the knob on his sceptre polished by the skilled workers at Repulse Records. Dave Rotten is a master felater.

I would have to say the reason my site is so popular is because I’m a complete and total ass poseur. I attract all of the other poseurs of the world. In reality I’m just a dance freak. Backstreet Boys are fucking amazing, as are ‘N Sync and 98 Degrees, believe me, they’re much hotter than that. I’m actually considering opening up branches of Teufel’s Tomb to cater to my true musical preferences, like teufelscrib.com for my love of hip hop, and teufelssaloon.com for the excellent country music coming out of the underground in Iceland. It’s just amazing.

I just started it to promote the underground metal scene, and to become famous. Actually, I started the site back in ‘95 after going online and noticing all of the metal pages had no decent information and completely sucked. I started off by designing a Cannibal Corpse website to promote them, who, at the time, had just released . Around the same time Chris Barnes started his Six Feet Under project, and I added that to the page, eventually I had enough information that I split it up into two pages. I even had a Malevolent Creation site up briefly, but that was during a time the band didn’t suck as badly as they do now. At one point I had websites of Cannibal Corpse, Besieged, Crisis, Fear Factory, Malevolent Creation, Napalm Death and Suffocation. In 1997 I finally moved the website to teufelstomb.com and had only the official Besieged, Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death and Suffocation sites. Back in 1995 or 1996 (I can’t recall) I decided to start up a magazine entitled Aural Armageddon, it was on the web, and a few copies were actually printed (less than 20, just printed from the printer on my computer). I found that to be a pain in the ass so I just made it a full-time webzine. In the beginning it was actually a nice zine with pretty much kiss ass reviews and interviews with a few well known and underground acts. In ‘98 I figured it was kind of confusing having the two similar things used to promote metal being separate, so I combined the two. From those who remember the old site, it was a true fucking mess. In May ‘99 I had problems with the piece of shit provider I was using and they fined me for some bogus crap and threatened legal action against me if I didn’t pay up, I just told them to fuck off. Around the same time I’d gone to the Ohio Death Fest and realized just how fucking stupid metal heads are by hanging around with them, and more or less decided it wasn’t worth my time or effort to rebuild the site for those losers and killed it off. In September ‘99 I was unemployed and bored so I started working on rebuilding the site from scratch. It took a lot of long hard work, but I finally got it done. The site is basically part informational tool and part just me goofing off and entertaining myself. I didn’t bring the site back for anyone, I just brought it back because it gives me something to do while I look for work. Once I’m employed I’ll probably kill off the site, pissing many people off, but I don’t care.

That is a ridiculous question, of course not. www.sexystudsinleatherchapsandcowboyhats.com yes, but www.gay.com? I mean, really, what do you take me for?

I think homosexuals have always existed in society, they just hid behind a macho veil. In the 90s a lot of people came out of the closet and homosexuality became "okay" in the mainstream. I personally have nothing against people being gay, if two women want to frolic in each other’s gardens or two guys want to give their knobs a spit shine, that’s fine with me, what I do have a problem with is people feeling they must tell everyone that they’re gay. Who the fuck cares? Anyway… to touch on your subject… I mean, the subject in hand… I mean… umm… I think the entire world has just become far too fucked up. People of today have things much easier than they did 30-40 years ago. When technology wasn’t as advanced, people had to do a lot of the things they take for granted today the hard way. If you wanted to change the channel on your TV you had to punch your kid in the head and make them change it for you. If you wanted to mow the lawn you had to push the rusty old mower yourself, instead of riding around in a glorified golf cart. Things were just harder, and in the past however many years technology has advanced to the point where people don’t need to rely on the old ways of doing things. People do a whole hell of a lot less now than they did back then. Back then everyone suffered and everyone worked hard and got thick skin from generations of that, now people have just gotten lazy, and too many people have too much spare time and they are now running things. I mean, only a few years ago to watch hockey you had to fucking watch the screen and follow the puck with your own eyes, but to make things easier they now have a blue streak to show you where the puck is. I mean, if that’s not the ultimate in laziness, I don’t know what is. The hard workers at the top got lazy and buckled under pressure and now completely full of shit people are in power. Either that or the blame can be put entirely on The Village People and the acting of David Hasselhoff.

Don Decker is a man of infinite wisdom, he is simply too busy sharing his views with the world, like how used tampons can be recycled into meals to be served at fast food restaurants to be able to reply to the interview I e-mailed him. Either that or he found a 24 hour "All You Can Eat" restaurant and is milking his $7.50 for all he can. He’s probably passed out under a table at Denny’s as we speak.

For the most part Canadians are nothing more than Americans who say "eh" a lot. People living in Toronto and Vancouver are basically just people who wear berets, smoke cigarettes through small plastic holders and whine whenever the thermometer dips to freezing, they practically close the cities when it snows. True Canadians are a manly breed. Even the most feminine Canadian is more manly than the manliest American. Every true Canadian doesn’t own a snow blower, we shovel our snow with a spoon, and not a table spoon, oh no, that would be the American way of doing it, we do it with a tea spoon, the *true* way. We drink real beer, not tap water with a touch of alcohol in it. We drink the kind of shit that could kill an ox with one sip. Fuck you and your 2.9% beer. Anything under 8% is Mountain Dew to Canadians. We can always tell who the American tourist is at the bar, they’re the ones passed out on the floor with only two empty bottles of beer sitting in front of them. We don’t count how many drinks we have by the bottle, we count by the case; "How much beer did you drink?" "I’m on my 8th right now, only just now starting to get a buzz." "Pussy."

It is a little known fact that Jagr is actually a metal fan, unfortunately I think his favorite band was Metallica because when they cut their hair, so did he. He seems like the type of European metaller who would wear band patches on his jean jacket, I’m sure he still wears one. The reason the Americans keep winning the Stanley Cup is easy, to piss off Canadians. It’s true, Americans couldn’t care less about hockey, but since Canada fucking destroyed the Americans in the World Series a few years back, they have felt compelled to humiliate Canadian teams every chance they get. Of course most Canadian teams are compiled of illegal immigrants, most of whose only English they understand is "put puck in net" and "take a dive." Canadians would win more Stanley Cups, but as Canadians living in Canada, they have to contend with being completely wasted and hungover from their 8 or 9 beer consumption (remember, that’s in cases, not bottles). It doesn’t really matter anyway, most American teams are compiled of Canadian players anyway, so no matter what, some Canadian goof who grew up playing with a cows tits on the farm is going to be jerking off in the Cup while some Swedish pud packer drinks from it.

Yes. Everyone who reads my website is stupid. Even as we speak there is someone reading my website and thinking up as many uses of the word "gay" to add in a single paragraph to describe my website and the reviews contained within. I, however, don’t care what these people think, since they, being the retards they are, still come back to the site on a regular basis only to find more things to complain about. If I get so many complaints for just stating opinions, then I know I must be doing something right. I don’t even mention anything being "gay" in a review or use any racial slurs, I just go out of my way to be as obnoxious as possible to irritate them. Then again the people who do complain about the website are 17 years old, were listening to Korn no more than 2 years ago and now claim to be metal authorities, while you and I have been listening to metal since our mothers were moshing at Black Sabbath concerts while we were still in the womb. Actually, I have been listening to metal for almost 18 years, the first band I listened to regularly at age 5 was KISS and, technically, they were metal at the time. So really, to answer your question, yes, the readers of Teufel’s Tomb are indeed fucking morons as anyone with half a brain should realize that my opinion is the only one that matters. As always, I am cool and you are gay. Fuck off.

Scott: Yes.

Nick: I am too dumb to be gay. Once I tried, but I just bruised my dick on this guy’s nut sack.

Scott: I am so gay, I am poop. One time in fifth grade, I got sucked off by the local accordion player Fido. Fido was amazed by my brown, urine rich penis. He jerked me off real hard, til eventually I sang yankee doodle dandy while fucking him up the ass. Another gay occurrence I had was when I disrespected Tom. Tom was mad at me because I ate his shit covered butt biscuits. He let out a un-metal scream. You know the sort, just like Tom Warrior on the Cold Lake album. He then gave me a Peter-From-Ember-esque cockwelt that left my booty bruised and tickled! Being ay gay with enta pay isay eally ray ay gay!!!!

Tom: So, uhhh… What’d you think of my shit biscuits? My scream was more metal than anyone else’s had ever been… Come to think of it, it was the most brutal un-metal scream in the US… Anyway, I’ve been a hemophiliac the longest out of anyone… I’m better than anyone else in this band at being that way… It was actually my idea to be a David Duke cover band… Just like in my other band, the theme was to play really bad music… To shortly answer your question, I’m the truest there ever was!! give me da boobie!! Wahhhhh!

Tony: I have deep seated respect for brown dick, and Johnny Depp. Also I like my steaks medium rare even if it violates health code, so go ahead and be crestfallen, bitch. I really want to have sex with Nick and Toms’ mothers, and make them swallow, the true sicilian tradition.

Nick: When I was 15, in second grade, my obese art teacher fucked me with a rubber fishing lure. The thing I like best is the sweaty fat roles squishing against my hairless butt cheeks. When he came he twisted his nipple and bit my back. I later sucked his cum out of my anus with a hose. The hose was made of rubber too.

Scott: I do recall an experience that was so homosexual, that I am forced to blush every time I recall of it. It was a rainy day, that incredibly dry and hot morning. I found myself in the middle of Liberachi’s buttcheeks inhaling the rectal pus, warts, and other emanations that were coming forth from the ass of a thousand sparkles. As he was playing piano one day… I found myself on top of 81 keys… sodomizing myself up and down the lengths of white and black keys. Well needless to say… Liberachi was quite the piano player… Playing Tchaiovsky with one hand, jerking me off with the other… well… All of this man lust was driving my bowels to the point absolute repugnance… and with that… I shat… and that was the end of that…

Tom: I have always initiated all of my homosexual encounters… You could say that I was the originator of homosexuality. They’ve all been pretty much the same… It starts with me giving a student a bass lesson, and tell them that they have to fret 5-4-1-absolute zero sequence, and they always ask where absolute zero fret is. I tell them its in my pants, and if they don’t fret it, they fail the lesson. Needless to say, I always tend to cum on their little bass-playing fingers.

Tony: I seem to be dependent on my kike traps for a good laugh. As for Micheal Dukakis, his balls are red and his dick is a sassy turd brown. My vegetable garden has many cinnamonnigger protectors. Them scandalous coons be stealin my rutabagas everyday!!

Nick: Well, a fortnight ago I attempted such a haughty maneuver, but Abbas would have none of it. Being that my penis is eight and a quarter inches of misshapen pallid curvature, he was quite unwilling to accommodate my sloppy jalopy.

Scott: Teufel, Give me a challenge here. Abbas from Ember? I have made that little harlot cum far too many times to count on one hand. I would say about 3 or 4 times I have made Abbas cum. The first time was at Saks Fifth Avenue in Chicago… Talk about an overpriced buffoonery. I put on a little tight, hot Gucci outfit that must have costed over 4000 dollars, and Abbas gunked his pants, I swear to god. He blew a wad that was so embarrassing to him that he fainted. We called an ambulance to try to revive Abbas, but he slipped in to a coma. It was several months before I got to mentally fuck with the sleazy little necrotic hell ass, but you better believe… When I fuck Abbas, I fuck for keeps… Abbas, the next time you put firecrackers in your ass and you do the tango… you better believe that this bad cramma jamma is going to put the jam in your jelly roll…

Tom: Wahhhh! I’ve lost count how as to how many times I’ve penetrated Abbas’ Paki loins. Not to mention the many times I’ve had both Pete and Nader simultaneously. Oh well, I’ve moved on to bigger and better things now… Satyricon, look out!!

Tony: I very adherently obey the traffic laws of Rhode Island, as long as it is a weekday, and no grandma jew is givin me shit. Sunday morning is turd glazed croissant day, and I eat a full, hearty meal. Michelle Pfeiffer has hemorrhoids, and Danny Karwin is a sexy bald bitch.

Nick: I spent all my math classes watching 80s sitcoms. I may not be aware of the difference between sine and cosine, but I can tell you the dick lengths of all the Partridge Family. The track numbers actual coincide with the number of times I have had sex with the following people: Boris Karlof, that fat chick from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Marlon Brando, any given guest on a talk show about she-males with eating disorders, my sister (her tight hairless pussy milked me better than any farm hand ever did a cow!), Al Dimiola, Rue Paul, and Gary Coleman (he has a huuuuuuge cock! MMM!)

Scott: What the fuck are you? Some kind of Hebrew Spank! Listen up gumby! I am Captain Algebra now! If we want 2 to come before 1 than take that like the pure cum soaked bitch you are donkey dung! Before you go off calling me a genius… remember this… I invented the light bulb… I have 3 testicles one for each ice cream cone, so start licking dem clean like da pure hoggurgling nut tweezer you are! Jerky!

Tom: Numbers, numbers, who’s got the numbers..? Now, why wouldn’t it be logical to list the numbers as such? Do you think we’re dumb like kykes? Only kykes are math teachers. So, fuck them. They don’t have da boobie.

Tony: Sometimes I prefer chunky peanut butter during anal masturbation, but on a sad, lonely rainy day, I would definitely prefer smooth Peter Pan. As far as Duracraft fans, I would definitely buy one for my aging parkinsons grandma, and gank it back after she keeled. Mushroom and onions go good together, but if you add some burger seasoning and some green peppers, it rocks like Nelson.

Nick: That depends upon your definition of “original”. I mean, aren’t we dealing with a highly subjective term here? It seems to me that a better euphemism would be “cankerous” or “pedantic”. To truly understand the malrefracted idiosyncrasies of modern death metal one must first recapictulate the “painted veil”, as Shelley would put it, as well as succoring the insalubrious. Surely it would not suite us to “bore through our scabbard”?

Scott: Why do salamanders suddenly appear.. Under a Tahitian moon??? I was once in the Baltic Sea when I found a jar full of acid… I dipped my pecker inside of the jar of acid and learned a very important lesson; If you are going to have anal sex with a humpback whale, always wear a helmet… As far as being original goes… My influences are mostly from Tito Puente, Keiko Matsui… and Morbid Entree.

Tom: The importance of originality as comparable to the importance of the word “kyke”. Some may spell it with and “i” as the vowel, however, the TRUE (opposite of FALSE) spelling is with a “y”. It should not be spelled any other way, much like Pentagoria’s music… it shouldn’t be played any other way.

Tony: *rambles angrily* IS DO I. NAD I SAID, “HOW DARE YOU CONFISCATE MY MARSHMALLOWY BLASTED FRUIT LOOPS.” SO I CAPPED HIS CHINK ASS, THATS THAT.

Nick: Why, good sir, should you ever believe it complex? It is simply a matter of intertwining several strands of dilinear modes and circumventing them with inverted triads. But all this pales in comparison to my ability to blend with other ethnicities; especially those of Mexico as I share their propensity for growing mustaches while obviously lacking the testosterone to do so.

Scott: Barnacle Bill says that Barbecue Sauce is complex. I think that as a band we have gotten a lot better at………………. SUCKING DICK! Had you going there for a second didn’t I! Listen you rancid goat terd, I have spent far too much of my time crafting the brilliance of this band… I don’t need you or any of your Kyke friends screwing it up… I got a degree from Sesame Street Fatass… So pass it on! Mommy put sandpaper up my ass, and I liked it god damn it… I liked it!!!!!

Tom: It all depends on how smart one is. I, however, am the smartest in the country. I’ve multiplied Micheal Keaton. I’ve divided the Red Sea. So, after those hellacious tasks, you can see that the music in Pentagoria really isn’t that complex. its nothing like factoring out the band Regurgitate.

Tony: I will be taking over the answering, since everyone will be gathering for a group orgy in the septic tank.

Tony: Dream Theater, Type O, Arcturus, Lorde of All Desires, Astroglide Allstars, K-Y Confusion, Probe Strobe, Poop Shoot Pop Group, Entertain Us Anus, Scrotum Potion, Nut Glut, Sack OR Rack, Cream Team.

Tony: The first album was gay, I don’t understand why we even bothered to do it… I don’t even know why we are a band right now. Fuck this shit I think I am going to go be a nun and pray to my lord and master. I don’t need Pentagoria to make me realize how gay I am, I have religion for that shiznit.

Tony: My avocados should be medium rare, but not with extra virgin olive oil. Dog meat is very tender with some balsamic vinegar and white wine. Michelob Golden Light is still my favorite though.

Tony: I put a pin in my dickhole once, and thus sensing and probing the inner depths of my tender urine grotto, I spelunked the keyhole orifice of my manly obelisk. Traversing severe crevasses and well salting my runny anus. The stalactites and stalagmites are thick and dangling, or yearning for their vertical kindred. Thus “The Convergence Of The Twain”.

Tony: Each member, including myself, runs their own homosexual aborigine commune on the side. That’s where each member gets income to invest in the band. The only musical side projects are the echoes of a thousand slapping scrotums upon a thousand different anii.

Tony: Fuck puppies are a great stress reliever on tuesdays nights after AA meetings. Where’s the uncircumcised bevel sander? I think I left all my Neil Diamond christmas albums next to it.

Freddy: Ok, fuck this, I’m answering a damn question! Listening is not necessarily something that one can actively participate in. It is nothing more than the passive ingestion of sensory information, successive vibrations that one can neither translate nor affect in any way. One may only pay attention to the sense that one’s brain makes of the timber and pulsation. In that sense, don’t we all make the music of the world?

Scott: Yep, a couple. I want to ask you a question Teufel. Are you a groundhog molesting butter sucking urethra earthworm stuffing bitch?

(Someone in the band pretending to be me): Well, I am a sack dingling, ass rangling, butt fucking necro tard. But aside from that I am just a big dumb fag.

Scott: I thought so. Thanks!

Tony: Well, I want to give shouts to my gaga, and Kyle Machlachlan. Decker has the most deformed toes I have ever seen, I have nightmares about them. He also has a patch of skin underneath his gut fold that looks like cottage cheese. I also have a theory that he is secretly a woman, and is currently undergoing menopause, and is a moody bitch on the rag. Lame bands are not worthy of my time and energy, so they can go hang out with Hall and Oates… “she’s a maneater!”.

Erik: (laughs) Well, so far, that has all been true.

It’s the techniques, the different techniques. A lot of the techniques are unorthodox, stuff that I never used in Morbid, stuff that I never used in typical writing with Ripping Corpse, the older stuff I did. Most of the techniques and the speed of the technique, it’s gonna [involve] lots of [something]-ization, gotta have about 10-15 guitars. Well, first of all, Doug could not tour because he has a new career, 9-5 guy. I dig that… we never really discussed touring in the beginning, but I assumed that he might be there when it came to tour, he said that he couldn’t tour cause he’s got a job where he wasn’t willing to tour, so I pretty much, there’s nothing I could do but bite the bullet as they say.

Yes, originally it was a 3-piece.

And Tim, the drummer. Basically, Alex was just filling in for the beginning… until we could find a permanent bass player. Nobody else could play it, I mean, put bass around that. Then I got Jared in the band who’s still with me, sings and plays bass. I got Doug at the last minute. I’d already signed a contract with Earache, I already had the whole record written, and I’ve been friends with Doug for 10 years. Suffocation broke up, I said, "Hey, why don’t you come do the Hate Eternal record? I just signed a deal, I got all this great shit happening… I’ll drop a couple songs, you can write on the record, we’ll tour, this and that…" He was gung-ho, but I guess as time went on, we got all these tours, we got this major tour, we’ve got a European tour with Deicide and Cannibal and Marduk… he just wasn’t willing to commit to that extent, so… I tried out a bunch of other guitarists, but… I gotta say that I think it’s probably gonna stay a 3-piece.

Yes.

Erik: Yeah, because I have… let’s ask Jack… you think it sounds full enough with one guitar?

Jack (Sound Engineer): Dude… this band… there’s nobody else cluttering up the sound, it’s good to hear your [sore?] leads…

Erik: Thank you… well, Jack’s Jack.

Jack: I quit! [laughs]

Erik: I have it worked where I’m in stereo, I’ve got minor/major thirds in stereo…

I’ve got 4.

2 on each side. I have minor/major thirds going over to the other side, got the [buzz-nian?] thing on my side… I worked out a lot of shit to incorporate a thick wall of sound. 2 amps… my equipment’s pretty… legendary, a lot of shit. The only time that you really miss any guitar, is just a couple, about 2 or 3 counterpoint rhythms on the record, and the solos… but I’ve actually become "spoiled" with the solos because I’ve always played 2 guitars. Now when I solo, it’s even more floating. That’s always been my lead style, like a "floating" type of solo…the hanging notes, then a fast one for flavor, rather than just to show off, so the solo’s a story. And now, the solo’s even more of a story cause it’s so dominant. And at first I was like, "ah…this is strange!" but now I’m actually becoming very fond of it.

Yeah, I’m not in any hurry…

No. We’ve already got half the next record written, so we’re probably going to record the next record in December and keep it a 3-piece. Unless the right guy comes by and it works out… I’m not in any hurry to try to find… I was originally.

No, I switch constantly. Probably couldn’t see it between the wedges, the monitors. I’ve got all kinds of shit… [to] incorporate the harmonies, yeah, stuff like that. Harmonies and delays, reverb, stuff like that, everything’s controlled. I use the telefax, I use a sonic maximizer in stereo with two Marshall Artists, so it’s pretty intense. I got the vintage [30?] Marshall cabs…

Ah… I tried out a bunch of people. I’m not gonna mention who I tried out, but they just didn’t work. Everybody assumed that it would work out really easily…

He was working on it, I don’t know what ever happened. So he called me and said he wasn’t going to be able to play in the time we had…

I did all the stuff in ‘97, and actually on the Hate Eternal record, I played most of the rhythms… all my songs are my rhythms.

‘97.

We don’t…

I have, we have, yes. The way I get contracts set up is usually… an excellent scenario, and that’s why I’ve waited for Hate Eternal to get the right deal. Same with my other band, Alas, we just signed a deal with Hammerheart. I waited for the right deal… Gunter Ford, my manager, who manages Morbid Angel, Grip Inc… everything’s in our court, otherwise it’s not worth it. I’ve been around for 12 years and…

For me, I want it to be every year. I want it to be fresh, especially now that we’ve had some lineup changes, I wanna push one out. Like I said, I dropped like 3 songs off the record for Doug to write his 3, so I had them sitting around. They’re newer songs that I wrote towards the end, but I kept them aside for Doug to write. I’ve got a couple more, Jared’s contributing to the next record also, cause he writes killer shit… so does Derek, actually.

Yeah, I think so.

Well, I wanted the whole production to be dark. I didn’t want it to be this bright, glossy production. I wanted it clear, but dark. I wanted the guitars heavy, and the guitars are super heavy… very much, deep, powerful, that’s what I wanted. In order to get the clarity of the picking and stuff want, it wouldn’t have the gain that I want in the overall sound, so it’s kinda like a catch-22. I had to go in between to get the sound I really wanted. The sound I go for is cleaner than… say, the Mesa Boogie sound… that a lot of people seem to use, but heavier, more gain than, say the Morbid Angel guitar sound, which is more mid-range, different kind of sound. Somewhere between the Morbid Angel range and like the Cannibal Corpse type of guitar sound, that’s what I kinda go for.

Not really…

Oh, the reviews have been way beyond my expectations. When you’re getting compared to Altars Of Madness and shit like that, I mean to me, what other bigger compliment can you get? To me, that’s like the best death metal record of all time. We’ve been getting incredible reviews and done probably over 100 interviews. We’ve been featured in pretty much every mag now…

No, not on the record. They’re in different order, pretty much. But the way I put them on the record is specific, the way I organized them was thought out. The whole record was thought out very methodically, planned… as far the way the songs went together, and even with our set, we planned it to be half-hour nonstop. That’s why I wrote those couple interludes in between songs, just so I could tune really fast and take a sip of water, so we could just hammer… 2, 2, 2 and 2 [songs] connected, to make it even more aggressive than the record… cause the record is just non-stop [something]…

The Hate Eternal, for the average listener? Yes, it’s complex for some and to some it’s not so complex, but to me the songs are there, they’re good songs. To me, lyrically, as far as vocal patterns and vocal style, Deicide’s always been one of my favorites… the high and the low and stuff like that. With Hate Eternal, I’m able to incorporate all that stuff cause I have another singer.

He did some, yeah. For me, that’s been a big inspiration… musically, obviously Morbid Angel, and Ripping Corpse, their early stuff… Hate Eternal’s what I try to incorporate a more direct, very much more direct path. I still want to incorporate songs. For me, I can write 50 rhythms, I can write super-technical, I’ll do 28/3rd’s and I can just fuckin’ go off, and I’ve done that with Ripping Corpse. We’d have fuckin’ 25 rhythms in a song and just peel it out, I’ve kinda been there. With Hate Eternal the focus was on song-writing, and creating really good structured songs within the confines of a very aggressive… attack!! Rhythmically… so I try to incorporate all of them into one big mass…

Um… it’ll never be a fusion record, it’ll never be Cynic…

I don’t know, I mean to me he does do a lot of goofy shit on the record… within the confines of double-bass, blast… it’ll always be that, always… because Hate Eternal to me, it’s supposed to be that way. I don’t want it to be anything but that, I want it to be death metal. Derek has a lot of other ideas and incorporations he does, and different blasts and double bass patterns and shit like that. That’s gonna happen, but it’ll never be anything but those type of combinations, that’s what I want with it. I don’t want it to ever slow… I want Hate Eternal to be aggressive. I want the next one to be more aggressive than this one, and that’s the goal of the [tribe?].

No.

Martina, yes. She’s singing on it. We just signed with Hammerheart and we’ll record in June.

No, he just kinda filled in for me, he has his own things going on. I’m doing all the guitars on the record. I realized that in many of those situations… it’s just easier. The Hate Eternal and for me to do the guitars… [lost what he said]… with Alas, I’ve been working on it for a while, I figure I owe it to myself to do all the guitars. I’ve got all the solos in my head…

Yeah, I do 4. All the Hate Eternal is 4 tracks, I double each side. So that gets kinda complex, it’s hard to match styles. When I did Domination, I had to match Trey’s sound on his songs and he had to match my sound on my songs, as far as picking stuff. It’s always, we’re two players of the same, it’s all a matter of how you can adapt. And I was able to adapt with Morbid Angel fortunately, on Domination the guitars are very… [smacks hands together]. There’s 4 tracks on Domination, but they’re very precise. You can’t tell which side is Trey or me. I know I’m on the left… that’s always a goal for me… to duplicate myself is the most efficient and easiest thing.

No, I played in Ripping Corpse for 5-1/2 years before I got in Morbid Angel, and that’s how I met Trey. We did some shows together before Altars Of Madness, we brought them up to New Jersey. We used to trade mail during like the Thy Kingdom Come demo in ‘88, ‘87. We wanted to bring them up, our manager Gunter, we had him contact Morbid Angel to bring up, we did like 5 shows, and then Gunter started managing Morbid Angel… and when Richard didn’t work out, he just thought of me. He said… Erik, you’re the perfect guy… Ripping Corpse broke up… it just worked out. I flew down, I learned like half the set in a few days, and that was it. I did all the tours for Covenant and then I became a permanent member after that.

Yeah, actually I’ll be on the next record, too.

Oh, Trey is definitely like, the master, as far as I’m concerned. Definitely, Morbid Angel, it’s always been my favorite death metal band. And then, Doug… Suffocation’s always had great guitars. I like Diabolic a lot, I like Nile, I think they’re awesome, the guitarists, they got some really good ideas. Solo-wise I’m into guys like Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, old Yngwie especially, stuff like that.

I’m not sure, man. We’re trying to work on it. Right now it’s all about timing. I play with 3 bands, so imagine my life right now. I just got back from producing the Krisiun record, and I also did the Morbid tour. So I come back for 2 weeks, practice for this tour, I’m on this tour for 5 weeks. I go home, then I go to Europe for the Deicide fest w/Cannibal and Marduk… as soon as I come back, I go into rehearsals to record the Alas record, and then the Morbid record, then I’ll do another Hate Eternal tour probably in the summertime. So, to work out things in between, I’m planning 8 months in advance, everything, my whole life has to be that way. I’d like to play the Jersey fest, I’d like to work it out one weekend, just cause I’m in Jersey so I’d really like to play the Jersey fest.

No! I never talked to him… shit, he could play it, that guy’s fuckin’… one of the best. I never thought to ask him when I was over there cause I knew Krisiun were getting ready, they were supposed to…

No, they’re back home in Brazil, but I knew they were gonna be rehearsing for a tour coming soon so I didn’t even ask him. But he, fuck… if I could find a guitarist like him, I’d definitely… be all right. He’s a fucking maniac. Recording Krisiun was fuckin’ awesome, besides the record came out great.

I’m not too familiar with the Great Kat. I’d like to check it out, I heard she’s a smoker. She’s a shredder, right?

I never heard it, I’ve just seen her pictures.

Yeah, they were a little out of control, really. I’d just start singing like I didn’t know. We recorded that a week after I started the whole band in general. I’d written a couple songs, and then, "man, I wanna do a band called Hate Eternal…" and I asked Alex, "Hey, can you play bass..," he said, "Yeah, well I had this song written…" or whatever so I said, "Oh… just put it on there…" So we just kinda winged it. Back then, in Ripping Corpse, I used to do backups, they’re all shrieking like that, it’s all high. It’s aggressive, but for the record I wanted to have a lot more control. I’ve been working on my voice for a couple years. Now I have some lows, some highs, some low-mid, low-high, I try to vary it. All the different songs have different kind of pitches on the record, like "Catacomb…", pretty low, but it has the high, and I did all the vocals on that song. There’s the last verse, which is high and low, shrieking, but low. But for me, the low-high-low has always been like David Vincent, like clarity, I’ve never been the guy wanting to… the indescribable… it’s always been cool, it’s cool but in those confines of the band, for me, clarity is what’s important.

Oh yeah, I love it. I mean, it’s hard to play the shit and sing it, took me months and months…

Yeah, that was fuckin’ me up tonight. I’m not used to that many strobes so I was like… wow.

C-Sharp. Step and a half.

Yeah, it’s not too low, not like Nile or Morbid, like 7-strings and… it’s in between.

I play a variety of guitars. The ones I have now, I play some Ibanez, and I actually have a couple old Yamahas from 10 years ago, they’re my babies actually… [something about those ones don't leave the house, he only uses them to record]…

Um… 13… almost 14 years. Still working, man… I’m still trying to play better as a player…

Well, I didn’t think it was when I wrote the shit, you know? I don’t think about it. On stage, I don’t think about the playing part, it’s the singing that I’m thinking about more. Playing is just… it’s there. I wake up and I can play the riffs, I feel it every day. When I did the Hate Eternal, I did all the rhythms for the whole record in a day and a half.

Ahh… 8 hours. I went out and I hammered it… just "bam, bam bam".

It’s both. I’ve been using these amps for a long time, with Ripping Corpse until now. For Morbid Angel, I had a completely different setup, but with Alas and Hate Eternal, I use a very similar guitar tone…

Yes. I also use passive pickups with a mixture of amps, whereas in Hate Eternal I use EMG active, and just the Artists. With Alas I use Ampeg with Jacksons… and Artists. I used Ampeg for all the solos.

Not live. It’s just like… I have 2 Marshall Artists already in stereo, I’d have to have 2 Ampegs… I’d have so much shit. I’m opening the show, so you can imagine, I have 10-15 minutes tops to get our shit on stage and get ready. It’s not like a Morbid gig where I’ve get soundcheck… we’ve gotta get on and fuckin’ do it, so I try to make my rig as simplistic as possible, but still incorporate all these harmonies and all this other stuff. I need all this shit, cause I’m only one guy.

I hope. The record’s been doing well. I can’t tell you the satisfaction I’ve gotten with this record. More than anything, but I guess cause it’s my baby. It’s my thing, and when you actually tell me that, "the best record in years..," and, "it’s helped rejuvenate death metal..," and stuff like that, I would say in interviews… the Hate Eternal is truly, solely based to like the true death metal fans out there. I definitely respect the death metal listeners who just want to revive the death metal ’scene’…

See, the last 2 are my favorite.

Yeah, I just love those two… I guess cause they were [more] diverse than the earlier Cannibal. I like George’s voice a lot better. Well, Chris was cool for what their music was then, George is cool for what their music is now.

They’re awesome. And he always sings perfect, live. I wish I could sing as perfect as he does every night, he’s always on.

Yeah, it’s my first tour ever singing, I’m surprised I’m doing as well as I am. It’s my 11th show.

I don’t know. I just know they said they wanted to start this sub-label, instead of put me on Earache section, which obviously Morbid Angel is the priority. They said they’re gonna start a sub-label and make Hate Eternal a priority. The guy that’s head of it, Dan, he was really gung-ho about Hate Eternal more than any other label.

Yes, real good. All the reviews… I haven’t gotten a bad review yet! Knock on wood, but… the reviews have been pretty phenomenal, so all I can do is be proud of the record, proud I’m out here on tour, 2 weeks tour in Europe… can’t ask for much more right now. Everything’s going my way, I’ve got 2 deals for both my bands, I’m playing with the biggest death metal band there is, the best death metal band there is, I think. It’s taken me 13 years to get to this point and I’m damn proud of it, and I know that I’m gonna consisently put out quality records. The day I don’t put out a quality record is the day I quit. Hate Eternal will never be weak, it’ll never change styles like other bands. That’s why I started Alas, I said I have all these other things coming out in my playing, I’m not gonna incorporate that into a death metal scenario. I’m doing that as a whole different thing.

No. It’s something different. To me, if you start a band [that starts --], stay that. Because when the band starts changing into different things… I mean, it’s all right to an extent. Like Morbid Angel, every record’s been different, but it’s always been death metal, always. Some bands… try to do other shit, that just doesn’t… I don’t understand it.

No, rarely. They change, and people are like, "What the fuck?" It’s always let me down. So my promise to the fans of Hate Eternal is that they won’t be let down, because I refuse to let myself down. If I don’t feel that type of thing anymore, then I just won’t do another record. I love death metal, I play, I write via death metal, so I know that I’m… I always chuckle around with Alex, "Death metal ’til 40!!!" We’ll both be like the Adrian Smith of death metal.

I like a lot of shit… I listen to some Persian music, Indian music, classical… Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, stuff like that… I like Dead Can Dance, Enya, soundtracks…

He’s young, he’s got all of these other things that he wants to do in life… and totally committing to touring in a van with a bunch of guys wasn’t really… we’re out here for a 5 week tour, we’re not making money, we’re out here bustin’ our asses doing what we have to do, but that’s what it takes. He just wants to go to school and do other things and just can’t commit to touring and everything. Derek, man… I got lucky with him. He’s the only guy who could honestly I think besides Pete Sandoval play it the way I’d want. He just happened to quit Divine Empire…

Yeah, he had quit… he happened to call me and said he heard that I was a good guy to work with and if I need a drummer, to let him know. Well, actually… I might need a drummer! I didn’t know if Tim would do the tours or not… so…

Yeah! He picked it up, I went to do the Krisiun record, I came back and Derek was playing the record… *tape cuts off*

Eternal Suffering: "T.T.P." stands for Tommy Tough Pants. Its about all those assholes who think they are tough when they are really just pussies. We chose the movie clips over lyrics because that movie rules.

Chad was a goon and we made fun of him. Chris was a dork and we made fun of him also. Therefore, we were/are the dickheads who make fun of everybody.

You seem like a goon, so consider it a dedication. Fag. And yes, that was a gay pun but you are a fag so it’s ok.

First of all, it would be a bare-bottom brawl and we think that you would like to be the ref so you could be close to the action.

We weren’t followers, but I’m sure we have done far worse things with puppets than he ever did.

Remain Forever In Misery shall remain forever unsold. If you want a copy, email us your address so we can beat you up for wanting such a horrible disc.

The pic is actually pretty cool, but was fucked up in production. The original can be seen on our website or on our new t-shirts.

Some of us caught them in Ohio and thought they were pretty brutal. Steve Miller hooked up the split. If it sucks, blame him.

We have 5 new tracks and it will be most likely to be released in the early summer.

Wayne has a deep interest in authors like Poe and Moliere, and it is reflected in the lyrics he writes. As far as the sodomizing of corpses and cannibalism go, we like to keep our personal lives private.

We have played tons of shows including some big fests. Coming up we have Ohio, Montreal, and Milwaukee fests. As far as stage presence, Brian and myself kill each other, Wayne rolls around like he has caught on fire, Chris looks like Mick Mars and Chad throws his drumsticks when there is still one song left.

Satan’s God is our hero. All our shows are a tribute to him. And as far as mangling our dicks, I already permanently mutilated mine, so a groin punch is nothing.

We have met Steve only once in person so no real stories. And why are you afraid of a Howard Stern look alike? Thanks for the interview. It was incredibly deep and thought provoking and offered a real insight into the band. Anyone who wants to contact us for shows, merchandise, or if you are a hot chick who wants a fisting we can e-mail us.

Abbas: Hi Eric!!! *blush* *giggle* Well I really can’t hide the fact that I get wet when talking to you as well, you know… I have to reach down and touch… It’s funny you bring this up because I have asked other people in bands that are actually known and sell albums about this similar topic… well every little culture and subculture has its icons and all that so this behavior is not exclusive to big name pop stars and celebrities. Look how many times we’ve been on IRC and you see someone going “Are you Teufel from teufelstomb.com??” Although I haven’t really seen anyone offer to suck your cock over it exactly, at least not in public… (other than myself and a French Canadian, and she makes no secret of it so I don’t feel bad about saying it, and why should I regardless, it’s not a bad thing), I’m sure you get enough attention based on how popular the site is/was/will be again. On the other hand, I personally do not see how a ROCK STAR syndrome really fits too in line with DEATH METAL, I mean if this is the type of thing you are doing to be popular and all that, well…let’s just let someone else capitalize on that concept and work it into a kooky second-rate sitcom that might gain as much popularity as “Herman’s Head” and attract viewers of the same cunning intellect. I think pretty much everyone goes through the stage of being in awe of someone in a band etc etc but after 5 minutes when you’re able to get a clue that these people are just human beings like yourself, you can appreciate them for their talents yet still realize that they as well chew their food, do their laundry, have Chauncy pick up the kids from school in the limousine and have fresh lobster delivered to the house daily for a nice evening supper with the family, prepared fresh by Jose, the #1 chef in town, just like the rest of us. I mean, come on already…

Not that I want to make the French Canadian too jealous…but, yes, it was amazing. It was the best. It was the unstoppable onslaught of raw passion, excitement, thrill and BUTTSEX that any happy-go-lucky-wanna-be pissed off metalhead secretly waits for deep inside when he gets into a huge mosh pit and rubs up against a score of other hot, sweaty, greasy men. I cannot properly describe how volatile I felt at first when lying just a few inches away from you on the bed, trying to fall asleep and not make a fool of myself by reaching over, pulling your ass toward my groin and grabbing your bulge for all it was worth. Although the temptations I fought those first few minutes were some of the most nerve wracking of my life, I did not envy Leif for a moment who was comfortably wrapped up alone on the other bed…but I think he had enough to keep his dreams entertained that night. The only thing that would surpass the amount of cock slapping we shared that night would be to take a tour at a state prison and witness a couple thousand hungry men masturbating, screaming and throwing semen at the visitors (like a friend of mine told me about her excavation to Stateville Facility here in Joliet, IL). That or if Scott from Pentagoria had been there…my friend, you have not properly polished your knob until you’ve coated his beautiful bald head in semen and brushed your tool against the fresh, newly grown stubble on his cranium. Not to mention he has an amazing cum-catcher for those ravaging suck jobs that will make you unload a gallon of your love fluid in his general direction. It was not only magic, my sweet, it was destiny.

Gay bashing is for dumb fagg–err, I mean…yes, as I briefly eluded to in the previous question, I feel inclination toward if not outright homosexual desire runs quite rampant inside much of the testosterone filled macho essence plaguing the bulk of the male metal community. It is not unlike frat boys playing grabass with each other and the other examples you pointed out. In fact, I feel most adolescent males, no matter what music or other interest they’re into, have a large tendency toward homosexual behavior. I have witnessed enough different groups of “heterosexual” guy-friends that play touchy-feely among greater things with their good friends and members of their immediate group since I was in high school up to present day young college students. I am friends with several of them and I have seen way more than I would have ever hoped to in terms of male bonding. And as you said, it doesn’t stop there with men in their late 20’s, early 30’s and whatever else being paid to do this professionally. I have never really identified with this type of thing up until we met in Ohio and the tides turned. I had started the dress wearing thing months before that and that’s not going to change, that’s mostly just to make girls jealous. I usually don’t do this, but it’s kinda like that teacher from South Park said (I forget his name), “I’m not gay, I just act like it to get chicks.” I’m not sure where to begin with comments about “homophobia” itself, I am personally completely open about whatever and in fact have found homosexual people I’ve come to know to be far more open-minded, friendly and enjoyable to speak with. This is not a generalization because stupid people are everywhere. There are tons of books, seminar, web sites and other resources of information on this topic out there if anyone is really actually interested. I have an interview with the punk band Pansy Division coming up in my ‘zine which I can’t wait to print along with all my other “tough” metal interviews. Check their web site out, they even put up a pic of them I took at a show back in Sept. ‘98!!

My white friend, you certainly know the best ways to start pushing my buttons, but that’s no surprise of course. The only way I can deal with racism is comedy, you know… pointing out examples is going to take too long, there’s too many. Racism is a generalization. Right there by participating in such, you are already short-ending yourself. But there’s enough reasons as to why someone would do this, again there are tons of books and other things on this topic, but I can highlight a few of them here. Let’s say you don’t like a particular CULTURE and way of life…particular “races” have their own certain cultures/etc and it’s understandable to dislike that sort of thing…I myself don’t care for “muslim” culture and other aspects of the way a LOT of brown people from my “homeland” are involved with. Extending a disliking for particular culture to a racist viewpoint and saying ALL brown people or whatever are like this is the idiot’s route. After a while, perhaps you become too tired of differentiating each and every single person from a race that you’re biased against… so assuming they’re all filthy inferior assholes is the next step. THAT is human, everyone does this… I mean you and I have no problem assuming “everyone” is fucking stupid. We probably sell ourselves short in enough respects by not giving strangers the benefit of the doubt and assuming they are fucking morons who are not worth our time… this is just extended to everyone, not one particular group of people… and as I’ve come to think lately, assuming just becomes funny, the losses are expendable because I am not really out to make more friends, I just look for people with a good sense of humor who already comprehend all this on their own. Racism is an even more narrow version of this and has other stipulations about a “hierarchy” and blah blah blah, it becomes based on “skin color”, not belief/culture/way of life, at least for the common racist moron. Look at christians… if ‘christians’ were a race, you could call me racist I suppose, but I have christian friends and it’s not an issue… they understand exactly why I have problems with it (just like any intelligent person should). However, christianity is a belief system, a way of life, not something based on skin color. Most people are born into it but it’s something you CAN grow out of, whereas your skin color/etc is inherent, you didn’t pick and choose what you wanted to look like, etc (unless you are Michael Jackson or others in that respect). There are also enough people born and raised with racist beliefs, but once again, it’s something you *can* grow out of. Once people get comfortable in believing something and find some kind of confidence with it, it’s quite hard to change that, so rather than fight it, it’s better to work with it and show them how clever they really are, I think. You have seen me do this with NS brainchildren and a couple FASCINATINGLY intelligent Bahraini assholes as well. There is too much more that can be said on this that I won’t bother with…I haven’t really had too much of a run in with this face to face…when I visit Poland and other richly racist environments, I’ll send you an update…

Egyptians, Indians, what’s the difference…they’re all foreigners. Do not even make fun of Ahmad!! The Punjabs know how to RIP SHIT UP, you honky-ass faggot fucker. I have to go and catch up on a lot of Eastern music… by the way I am PAKISTANI not INDIAN, bitch. Even though they are the same people except religion… it’s funny, if you call a pakistani an indian or vice versa they will get pissed, the degrees will vary depending on the person of course but try it next time you’re in a 7-11, Dunkin’ Donuts or any local convenience store if you don’t mind getting shot at. I used to listen to whatever music my parents had on when I was a kid, my mom even has a tape of me singing along to some songs from various movies I used to watch over and over and over, I was like 2 or 3 years old, it’s pretty fucking hilarious though I won’t allow anyone to listen to it obviously. Eastern music has a different scale system and all that, it’s ‘atonal’, it has ‘more’ notes in the scale…if you want to open up your brain I would suggest really digging into some of it, if you can harness it properly it can be turned into some really evil stuff. By the way I want you to know that I’m the new drummer for Sexual Chocolate.

Hahaha! That’s great!!! Do you know if he ever became successful?

hahaha… Pakistanis are Muslim. I was ‘born’ into the religion but never followed it really strictly, my parents did not force me into this shit. I know exactly what you’re talking about, I’ve known plenty of people like this, so has my mom and that’s why she never forced my brother or I into religion and studies and all that. This could explain why I spend all my money on metal and other things and am always broke, living at home and dropped out of school… but really there is positive that has come out of it. I wouldn’t be sitting here being able to say these things if otherwise. My brother is the one that has his act together, he’s responsible, going to school, actually WORKS at work, etc. I do not like this ’stereotype’ and you are not far off, there are a lot of people like that. Some of them are nice, cool people, just whatever… but enough of them are pretentious and I don’t know, don’t seem to be interested in anything other than worshiping Allah and making money. The people from pakistan/india/etc that are “smart” enough to make it over here are really self-conscious about money and that sort of thing and in many cases it gets to the point of being totally pretentious, etc. Once again I’ve learned this from my mother. My mother is the most open-minded person on the planet, (not to mention one of the best cooks you can find). I’m going in circles here…if more people were given the opportunities that I have been granted, you would likely see a lot more “wacky pakis” around and that sort of thing. The people over in those countries have so much shit forced onto them, they would be perfect candidates to create some really pissed off music… they live in the middle of political uprisings, religious tyranny and all sorts of other restrictions that mold people. Metal is slowly starting to make its way over there actually…I wish I could have helped this a bit more…I took some old tapes I had (Megadeth, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Slayer, etc) when I visited back in 90/91 and my cousin liked them, wanted me to send more over but it didn’t go anywhere. There’s some people getting into it more over there though it’s hard to come by, etc… I imagine if things were to get going they’d have some great bands eventually. Another cool thing I found out was that Urdu (main Pakistani language) is the #1 language spoken by Chicago cab drivers.

Although I can handle a large portion of your aroused member, our brains cannot handle infinity, plain and simple. Religion is a good way to teach morals and give theories to the otherwise inexplicable, it is not my thing though. Throughout time, Science and Logic have given religion a huge run for its money, but yeah you’re right, they still can’t explain the eternal question of how and why we are here. I would suggest not worrying about this too much, really… rather, think of why you are here in reaction to your immediate environment, try not to focus too much universally because you are nothing more than a tiny, miniscule little fragment of a meaningless speck of dust in this universe… on the other hand, even if you were some huge supergiant about to go nova and swallow your entire solar system, you’re still part of the same pattern and you have to make do with what you are and have. if you have problems figuring out what “life” is about and stuff, then maybe religion is something that will fill that void and make you feel worthwhile, but if you know what I’m talking about and have felt your time here is being well spent, then it’s a good thing to hear and you likely don’t have to be told all this. my experience with ‘religion’…as I said I was ‘born’ into Muslim religion, never practiced much though. I started going to Christian school from kindergarten and remained until I was expelled in 7th grade. This was more for silly behavioral things, nothing serious… I brought some metal tapes into school one day, obviously this wasn’t the place for them so that was my fault… I wrote some ’swear words’ in a note to a friend in study hall, I had a “dirty” joke book (my mom gave this to me, when the principal called her and read an example from it she said she was laughing quietly) and a few other stupid things… it all added up and they had had enough. Just early last year I ended up meeting some people that went to that school after I had already left… they ended up knowing all the kids in my class and others I knew, in fact one of them I went to school with in 3rd grade and vividly remember him playing the violin at the nursing home with our choir, and I also remember his mom coming to pick him up after school one day so I told her to hold on and I’d go get him from up on the hill behind the school. The next thing I see this kid is sitting next to me at a friend’s apartment, saying how he’d really like to be participating in the porno on the TV right now and getting laid and drunk (he apologized to me also because he had just broken up with his girlfriend). I later realized who he was after meeting others that were with him and it blew my mind. these are people who are still in that ‘mentality’ sort of, where ’sex’ is “off limits” and all that… it’s fucking crazy. They told me stories of other people that went to that school and ended up going over to christian colleges and were expelled for things like having firecrackers in one’s dorm, having sex with someone or getting drunk on the weekend and other shit… I also heard one of the teachers from the school was caught masturbating in his car outside a Wal-Mart and was consequently fired. they told me the school was becoming more and more fascist and it drove them nuts, some kids just snapped after a while. One guy I was talking to in particular said he stayed through it just to finish it off and not have to have his parents deal with expulsion/etc, also they did give a good education (which I can attest to). he’s in college now, when he’s out he’ll be put into a job making 50-80k starting/within the first few years. This is how these other christian colleges operate as well… it started dawning upon me how this entire system they have works… they train you since childhood and anyone who steps out of line is expelled completely… the ones that stay are given these good jobs and they usually get married at 22-24 and start their families, their kids enter the same process, etc. I didn’t start becoming really anti-christian til later on in high school, though, and then finally militantly in the last few years. I am agnostic as well, I believe in logic and reason, but I don’t deny supernatural forces entirely… I just prefer seeing before believing. I have a hard time having faith in anything other than myself or those I trust (few and far between). I am my own “god”, I’m responsible for my choices and actions and KNOWLEDGE is power to me. I don’t so much have a problem with the icons of religion as I do the followers… sheep are the ones who fuck it all up, really, it’s best to learn to avoid them as much as possible unless you feel restless and want some good laughs some day. For a while now my focus has been on educating children, this will grow some day… religion is a good way to teach morals to kids but not the only way, if you are inclined to do this and happen to have intelligent kids, then I can only pity what you’ll have to face if you don’t smarten up.

I started with Ember originally back in ‘94 on drums…we got going a bit and months later I got a job & had no time for practice, etc…my brother was filling in on drums for a while but that didn’t work out either. they got a couple friends to fill in and record drums/bass for the first demo, then months later I ended up rejoining (on drums) and we started writing again, recorded the 2nd demo in ‘97… right around then is when I had that whole house arrest thing going on (I’ll explain this another time as I’m sure people reading this have spent way more time than planned on all the other fucking comments) so I wasn’t going to be able to go out and do live shows. Chris (Allen’s brother) filled in on drums for that and Ali had rejoined on guitar already as well, so we left it at that for the time being. I ended up hooking up with Novembers Doom in fall ‘97 and jammed a couple times and things went well, so we wrote & recorded the 3-song mCD For Every Leaf… in Dec ‘97. I have a funny store about this, quickly… the day I got off house arrest is the same day we were to enter the studio, so that morning I packed up my drums into our Ford Bronco, went down to the probation office and had the anklet monitor thing removed. I had to be at the studio early afternoon, so I went over to Pete’s house for a few to say hey. He & a couple other friends were going to come over for a few minutes before I left, so we followed each other back to my house. I was behind him as we entered my neighborhood, and I get pulled over. The cop tells me my license plate is expired. I tell him I haven’t driven this car in a year and a half, I’m only using it today to carry my drums… I show him my license, which also happened to be expired, that was my fault for not renewing it even though I had 3 months to do it… so he tells me I technically have no license, and he had already pulled my brother over the week before about the plates… so I’m like oh this is special. He tells me that I have to come to the station and someone will have to post a bond and blah blah blah…so i’m like ok this is great, not even 2 HOURS after I get off house arrest and I’m already getting pulled over and arrested for this shit. At least I made it that far. finally about an hour later I get home and let people know what happened, they all began to understand my paranoia… ok getting back to music, I think that’s what we’re talking about, right? Yeah, we recorded that mCD and I stayed with the band… at some point during that year we had dismissed Ali from the band just due to clashing interests and whatever, and we decided to keep Chris on drums because he was better suited for the style we were heading toward, so I rejoined on guitar. I have been playing guitar a year longer than drums but I still can’t play worth a crippled retard, not that that’s a bad thing necessarily but it doesn’t help in accomplishing what I’m after. I parted with November’s Doom around fall ‘98 as we were recording the new album because I had problems in the studio and we weren’t sure if they would repeat or not, so it was best to bring a new drummer in to do the album. Eventually they found a permanent replacement, I still hang out with everyone and all that… speaking of being gay and racist, I stayed up til 4am with Paul last night playing this new WWF wrestling game for N64, and I created my own character named the WaCkY PaKi, he’s modeled after me, 5′9″ 130lbs… his best moves are the woman’s slap and Chyna’s punch (where he hits the opponent in the balls). I was fighting Paul’s character who is 7′11″ 666 lbs, I kept punching him in the nuts and he kept giving me brain busters. I don’t think I’m going to do vocals anytime soon, I used to sing in choir back in grade school so i got some early voice training, I was taking a voice class back in fall ‘98 with Pete and we’d drive around singing Isengard’s Vinterskugge and Anthrax’s Soldiers Of Metal a lot, but I don’t know if that’s adequate enough to really take on full vocal status, really…even if I manage to have good stage presence in a dress…but then again you’re able to make me scream in ways that would make Mariah Carey jealous.

Oh shit…see previous answer, sorry. For once I’ll leave this answer short, unless you want me to explain what happened when I drove to the HMV in Toronto to buy CDs…

As far as I remember, every show we’ve played except our very first one (w/Cenotaph from Mexico) and the Milwaukee ‘98 show has had an attendance of between 5-20 people. We’ve played a couple basement punk shows with some friends’ bands around here that have been amazing, much more fun than almost any metal show. Enmortem is a great metal band to play live with, if anyone ever gets the chance. people have been the same everywhere, either way into it or no reaction at all. Actually I don’t give a fuck where we are playing, I enjoy playing live regardless, I should more the response from the punk shows has been far superior, but then again it’s people we mostly know already or at least have heard of us. The west coast was totally fucking awesome, I personally wish I could be doing that all the time (even if I lose my contacts and complain about not getting enough rest from sleeping the whole 13 hours while others drive).

No, live shows are awesome when it’s a band I like…you recall that show had some very ’special’ bands. well, whatever, i’m sure they were all good at what they were doing, the whole misogynist brutal death metal shit isn’t my deal and I spent more time hunting down Oreo cookies and chocolate truffles and giving them to various friends rather than watching bands. BUT…. there was one performance I could not get enough of, you and I both must form a cult around this individual, the man behind SATAN’S GOD!!!!! I should have been thrashing wildly to I HATE MY COCK!!!!!!!!!!!!! The last time I thrashed really hard was during Krisiun in ‘98, my neck hadn’t ached that badly in a long time. I was kicked out of a Deicide show a long time ago for being thrown into the security area while body-surfing, that was totally fucking depressing. I have another cool story about this guy who had to be in his mid 30’s that was thrashing at a local show and tried to start a fight w/some kids in the pit that kept knocking into him…god that was funny, he was w/a couple drunk glam rockers in a band called Innocent Lies, it was so fucking hysterical, talking about jamming with Don Dokken and George Lynch…

Most recently I have had the pleasure of becoming part of Teufel’s Tomb and help each other glorify ourselves. The main thing I’m working on now is my ‘zine, it’s been “in the works” for like 2 years or something ridiculous. The title will be “The Chiaroscuro Puzzle”. Some other plans are listed in the profile under the staff section so I figure if anyone has read this far and still wants to know this, they can follow the link there. Mustafa is taking a nap, we have a big race with the camels coming up tomorrow. Being stupid fucking rules, just wait til you and I are together again in Ohio this year…

Sparky: We have been pressing all of the previous albums on Blunt Force for awhile now, so it made sense to release Grotesque… on there as well.

We still have a really good relationship with Morbid. As a matter of fact, they’re bringing us over to Europe in early June for some shows, including the Fuck The Commerce Fest, with Monstrosity, Nasum, Nagalfar, Fleshgrind, Sinister, etc. We will probably be releasing the next album on a fairly well known US label, but we’re still working out the details.

Uhh, not that I’m aware of, but we were pretty intoxicated when we were in Europe ‘98, so anything is possible I suppose!

Well, the EP has two songs that were originally on the Bathe In Entrails demo, as well as covers of a Baphomet and a Next Step Up song. The ep isn’t intended to be the "new" album. It’s more of a way to show how the DF sound has been updated since the beginning, and a way to pay respects to a couple of bands who have really influenced us. The only new track is a joke song that is reminiscent of 80’s pop metal. We think that most people in metal have a sense of humor, and we figured that the ep would be the time to do something like this. We’ve gotten mostly positive feedback from people, ’cause it gives the release that "What the fuck…?" factor. We’re starting to record the next album Destroy The Opposition in late April, and it’ll be out by mid-summer.

Jason and John really don’t have a lot of opportunity to jump around, as their vocal duties restrict their movement. We had considered doing the Sammy Hagar headset microphone thing, but that idea was quickly nixed. As for myself, I just try to move my mop as much as possible.

Honestly, I prefer to not think of Kevin with his shirt off. So, I’m probably not qualified to answer that query.

DF went to Texas in May of ‘97 to do a week’s worth of dates. Talley’s band Deity played with Fetus in Corpus Christi, and we thought he was really good. The guy in Fetus at the time wasn’t working out, so we kinda half jokingly told Kevin he should move to Maryland to be in the band. About three weeks after we got back, Talley sent a video of himself playing the songs, without any musical accompaniment. We hummed the riffs along with his playing, and it was pretty much right on. We called him and told him to move up here, and the rest is history. Oh, by the way, he was 18 when he moved here.

I saw a video of him playing with them in LA, and it was pretty amazing.

Jason writes the lyrics, and they are really politically motivated, and reflect what is happening in the world at large on an everyday basis. As far as the word fuck, it can be used in so many situations and in so many ways that it will always be an important part of the lyrical scheme of Dying Fetus.

Let’s see, I went to the vet the other day, and he gave me a clean bill of health, but he did tell me to keep my flea collar on!

Living on the East Coast, you grow up with both metal and hardcore, so yeah, I’d say it’s definitely an influence. I played in a couple of hardcore bands myself, and have always gone to shows and supported both scenes. As far as labels go, we are first and foremost a death metal band, but obviously you can hear all the other influences throughout the song writing. Incorporating everything helps keep the material fresh.

I’m a courier in the DC/Baltimore area, so I ride around all day listening to tunes, and cursing the shitty driving of my fellow humans. Talley and Jason both go to school, and John had worked for the gov’t in DC. As soon as the next cd is released, we will be going out and touring full time. Necrowigger, eh? I think I’ll leave that one alone.

We always laugh at ourselves, ’cause I think that you can’t take everything seriously all the time. Just listen to "…Davey’s Nightmare" and "Hail Mighty North…" on the Grotesque Impalement ep. That being said, we do take pride in our musicianship and performance, as well as the merch that we put out.

Looking at the amount of people attending shows, and at the growth of metal via the internet, I think things in the scene are healthy. If you were someone who was fortunate enough to be into DM at the time of those early 90’s bands, then that is your measuring stick. Kids who are coming up now won’t necessarily have all the same influences, and so the constant evolution of the genre will continue. If you look around, you can find some pretty cool stuff out there. With MP3s so readily available, it makes it ever more easier to hear new bands from all around the world. But, I know where you’re coming from, as we who saw the rise of the genre can tend to be a bit jaded when we hear a newer band, and we compare them to the forefathers. Personally, I’m just happy that people still like to play this style of music. Even if it isn’t totally "original", as long as it’s played well and gives me that good feeling when I’m listening to it, then it’s all good by me. Besides, does anyone bitch when BB King or Stevie Ray Vaughn (rip) play the same old blues licks? Nah, ’cause it sounds good! You can’t lose sight of that.

I’ve been listening to the sounds of my wonderful suburban neighborhood, via the open back door. The new album Destroy The Opposition will be out by late July, and we’ll be touring after that. Anyone who needs info on shows or merch, please contact us. Also, be sure to visit our website for all kinds of info on the band. Be sure to sign up for e-mailing list while you’re there. Insults and death threats, eh? Hmmm… If you do not stay TRUE to the scene, may a horde of Tommy-wearing psychopaths hunt you down and force you to wear penny loafers and a polka dot tie in the pit. Of course, that would also be tantamount to summary execution, for as soon the DM and HC kids catch sight of your pitiful apparel and think that you’re a traitor to the scene, you’ll be ripped limb from limb, as it should be, for now and ever after. Oh yeah, all underground females, feel free to contact me at your leisure. Cheers!

Mike: Well he is in jail for violating his parole. We played a show in Colorado, and he was arrested there because he was not supposed to leave Dallas. I won’t say why he was on probation though. I think it had something to do with killing some filthy whores.

Wayne has remained our friend since his departure so naturally we wanted him back. He was excited to be a part of Devourment again.

We actually did officially split up, not only because Ruben was gone, but because of a lot of personal problems in the band with a different member. He’s gone now and will record our second CD very soon.

I’m not exactly sure when his release date is, but if he wants to sing for us, the door is wide open. I’m actually hoping to get him and Wayne singing on the new CD. We’ll see how that turns out.

We were never happy with the way our demo tape sounded so we re-mastered them and they sounded the way we intended them to at the time. Plus we recorded a new song, "Babykiller", for a CD compilation, so it seemed like a good idea to just throw everything we ever recorded, fully re-mastered on one CD.

I’m very good friends with Hound who runs CG. Combining that and the fact that he is close by which allows me to get more involved and see whats going on with our stuff just seemed like the logical way to go. He also takes great care of the bands on his label.

The new track is a small preview of things to come. It will be on the next CD. Our new stuff is way more straight-forward, less technical bullshit, way more brutal, zero boring shit, zero weak shit, just 100% brutal, extreme shit the whole time. Almost every fuckin’ band tries to progress or change their style. Fuck that shit, we’re going backwards man, our new shit is more raw!

We are hoping to enter the studio in August, but you know how that goes, something always gets delayed. Realistically we hope to have it in your hands by October or November.

It must be something in the water down here, but I assure you, those horrific sounds come straight out of their throats. Its pretty amazing. We just feed them steady amounts of beer and beef jerky.

I have done stuff for Viral Load, Prophecy, Repudilation, Immortal Suffering, Vile, Deeds of Flesh, and like tons of zines. At the moment I’m working on some stuff for our next CD sleeve.

We have a bunch of T-shirts, and Hoodies.

One of the guitarists we are using for our recording plays in a band called Dead Industry, and Kevin is playing around with Prophecy.

A brand new CD, new merch, and hopefully some touring.

We chose that picture for the cover because it just seemed so morbid, and really sets a dark mood, almost like a nightmare kind of vibe. It was because of the mood it sets, not because of that guys little weenie. I appreciate the interview bro, good luck to you, and to anyone reading this, watch for Devourment’s new CD, Butcher The Weak this fall. Later.

Don: Well, we recorded two songs to give away on compilation CDs. We also recorded three cover songs for Dwell Records, some older school stuff, which I’m sure you’d hate Teufel, and for our last two studio issues, we will record for a split cd with Cephalic Carnage, and then do a full length called Battered Bleeding Bitch, all of this should come out in 2000, assuming I can keep my dick in my pants.

Well, it seemed like a good band to rip on, they always use the female imagery, and the gay spelling for vampire, so off we went with it. We have now moved 4500 Vaginal Vempyre CDs… Yea and when the band saw it, they ate it up, they were actually cool about it. It was very funny. They did an autograph thing at my store in Chicago, and they all left with copies.

Well, I believe we are going to do Jersey, Ohio, Milwaukee, L.A., and Texas again, as far as I know that’s all we have going at all, I’m sure it will be quite boring.

Fuck Slipknot the bassist and drummer were original members in Anal Blast, and they quit. On the first demo, Puss Blood Pentagram, the bassist recorded. I haven’t heard from those guys in years, and could care less if I ever do again. I mean, they’re from Des Moines, Iowa. What the fuck else needs to be said? I’ve shit on stages, jerked off in front of men, fucked whores with vocal mikes and done every other gay drunk thing that popped into my brain and for this my reward in life is to be compared to fucking gay ass Slipknot. May their asses be filled with the semen of AIDS ridden cocks.

Well Teufel, actually the porn star kept it PG rated, it was Bridget from Orgy With Pigs, who fucked the mic in Milwaukee, and she did it in front of what is presumed to be 2000 plus on lookers. I poured beer down the nape of her fat ass, and tried to shove the mic in myself, then gave it to Britney O’Connell, who didn’t seem to want to penetrate her snatch, so she had to shag herself so to speak. I have lost track of Bridget since Texas, where she raped another stripper on stage. Man what a fucking riot that gay ass shit was. We found this stripper living under the stairs at our cheap motel, and she turned out to be the booby prize (literally), I still have her drivers license, I would send it back, but nah, she can blow my short white limp dick. Gay fat cunt bag whore bitch!

Na, I was too drunk to think of smelling the mic, but she did hook me with her panties later, complete with fake cunt blood stains. They reeked of vinegar, and then she told me her boyfriend wore them for a while.

Hahahaha, finally a real question deserving of my almighty attention, tampons at McVomit foods. Fucking right they should, that would rule, whores getting sick and refusing to eat there, and the ones that do have only the strongest moral fibre, woman of the church. hahahaha. Off fingering themselves in public, so they can taste how pitiful they really are. You see, the period, is not just unbred human eggs, but, its actually proof of the existence of god. See, a real god wouldn’t do that shit to males, but create a sub race of stupid fat lost lipstick wearing whores to bear the burden of reproduction, so we can be drunk and watch football all fucking day long, praise god!!!!!!! What a stupid question Teufel, was the answer gay enough for you????

Koshick will do jersey march 10th and 11th. Los Angeles May 19th and 20th Milwaukee the last weekend of July, and I’m not sure as to the time frame for the 2nd annual Texas Fest.

I’m not sure honestly what other expansion plans Jack Koshick. I think four fests is fairly big, considering he does lots of events a year. I think he will maybe search out other markets, when the three new fests all come together, and these things take a few years to get big.

Well, I’ve never been to a festival in Europe, so I guess id be the wrong person to ask about that show.

Well, it looks like we will be releasing another band I sang for called Malaria this year. The new Disinter is a possibility, and the two new Anal Blast projects. Not a lot other than that on the table right now.

Alright, we will skip to the whore question. What do you think a charming young man like my self would have in store for a member of the opposite sex? Well, I wouldn’t. Fuck them, getting drunk, verbally terrorized, put down, stunk out, and lied to, and if the fat homo bitches actually hang around, maybe they would be graced with the divine presence of my little white weasel, fall limp in there non attractive presence, and eventually, if I’ve been drinking beer, I’d piss on them. They like that, it makes them feel accepted, and gives them another chance to redo their makeup.

Yea Teufel, thanks for the interview, and I thank you dearly for your friendship and guidance in the last year or so, you truly are an icon in the underground death metal scene, if only they could all be like you, then our little scene would remain filled with mouthy back stabbing drunken assholes that destroy everything from within, that would seriously rule! Fuck you!

Robin: Now it’s cool to have a talk.

Yeah, we have been gone for a long time now.

[We] Did too much much drugs. We didn’t do anything…

No, now we’ve stopped.

No, we can’t do it. Everything gets so fucked up that we don’t want to play. We wanna do everything else [other] than playing. That’s what we do. We can’t make music, we [something]. We want to play, but not making music on drugs.

Yeah, that’s for sure. We don’t use drugs to make music. We do drugs afterwards. [something "before"], we haven’t done anything, any shit at all. But now we have, we started in new year, something like that. We have made 4 songs, so I think we’re going to have 7 or 8 songs. And then, we had lot of new kind of shit on the computer. We had some problems with the drum machine.

Not technical problems, just "how to do it". How will it best, that’s what we’re working on.

I do all the programming, mostly. Well, I’m the only one who can use the machine, but the others have ideas of course. But I do all the drum beats, everything like that. Sounds we do together.

Yeah, but he could do it. He made it, that was funny.

It goes back and forth. Depends, the drum sound and sometimes we have drums which we don’t know where to use into anything, and then suddenly… wow, it works. Like that sometimes it can happen. But mostly we have all the music done before, all the guitars and things. We play them into the the synthesizer, we play all the music on the synthesizer, and then I have everything on the computer so I can replay all the time when I need, because we need to do that all the time. Replay, replay, and that’s very hard to tell the guitarist, "Come on, play this again, again, again, again, you know what I mean?" It’s easier to have the computer do it. And I can do it more exactly, so…that’s the way Mysticum are like. It has to be perfect or nothing.

It’s not a synth, I just use it as a keyboard, but I have a model [Dulong?] SC88 or whatever it is, and then I have a sampler, Akai sampler, and my computer between it.

Yes. I can’t get any newer Cakewalk anymore.

I got the first one.

You have that?

Oh, that’s great, because we have some problems. I have some songs which I made before, and the computer got fucked up or something as the program was [locked?] and we have some songs which is made on this program, and we can’t play it on the older… typical problem. We have several things that I want to listen to, but I can’t.

Yeah, I have 7 so that’s the problem. Or 5 maybe I have.

I think I have 5 before.

You have my email?

K-o-s-t?

K-o-s-t @…

Yeah.

What kind do you have?

Oh, that’s cool. You have Illustrator?

8?

Yeah, 8 is the one I need.

I got it.

What?

Yeah, that’d be cool… just make some cool things.

You have my address?

Yeah, we’re gonna do it after the album is finished. We want to go to New York. There was a girl from Jersey called Jade, she’s selling stuff on internet, she had a shop in New York before. But now she only has internet, she’s not doing the shop. She sells jewelry and things like that, clothes, everything. So, Raven, the guitarist, he makes silver stuff, rings and everything. He’s an art man, he has been completing something for her so they’re gonna be real silver stuff there.

Yeah, everything. Just contact her and she will fix it. I think it’s… ahh, I don’t remember anything. (Laughs)

Yeah, that’d be real great. We had a great time over there, so…

…How’s the people over there?

And they’re good players… they’re friends of us.

Gorgoroth…

Oh Gorguts? Was Gorgoroth over there, too?

Yeah, I heard about that. Isn’t that where several bands play?

Yeah, that’s the same one.

And Emperor, didn’t they play that show?

They had some problems there, I heard?

When we played in New York, we [weren't] allowed to play the last song, you remember?

That was stupid. We heard that was Immolation. They didn’t want us to play the last song because it was overtime. You know, 5 minutes more…

You saw the people had a great time… it was stupid.

Oh, I don’t remember. I just remember the third (laughs), cause that was the song where we had the bass drums and snare.

Yeah, I had to go down to fix it. It was the cable, the COM cable. It was half put in, so it would sound on something but not everything. Usually it doesn’t work at all, but this time it worked a little bit, so it was very hard to find it.

Yeah, we had some problem in Paris. We were playing and we didn’t get any sound, but then we didn’t have the sampler…there were no sound coming out from it. But everything showed it worked. Everything worked, but no sound out… what the fuck is happening!? And we listened to the headsets, it worked there. But not output. So, I woke up in the middle of the night after we didn’t play that day, and I said, "Ah… it’s the screw I just put too long. It was a long screw, I should just screw it into a rack to make it fit." It [would] fall off and things, and it was going all the way down to the output signal, so it was going to ground, all the signal. I short cut the whole machine. Nothing went wrong with it, but it was just no sound. And I find out 3 o’clock in the night, I just woke up, "That’s the problem." (Laughs) I was thinking about it all the time, 24 hours a day.

We called at once and got $1,500.

We had to get $1,500 to buy a new one because this was only the second day. First we played London, then Paris and this problem came. And the money came three days after, but then I already fixed it, so that was lucky.

Yeah, we had to do that. We didn’t get the money, it was Osmose who got money from some guy, you know Bill Tromley?

Bill Tromley… we had a deal with Winterland. He just went away so we did not have any connection with him anymore. That’s good, we want to be on Fullmoon because that’s the guy. The guy who does it, he’s the guy who should do it.

He knows everything, man. He’s very interesting to know, to learn new stuff about and everything. He’s a good human, to say that. You can really know that he helps.

When we went over there, we met his grandma and granddad. We slept for 3 days.

In Mexico, yeah. Then we stayed in Laredo with his uncles and aunts, so it was cool, we met several cool people. So we know the whole family. When we went to Florida, we met his parents, we know the whole family now, and that’s cool. [When he comes into here], he knows my family and all families in the band. It’s not just like a company any more, it’s more a friendly type of… that’s the way we wanna do it. We can’t really have some… we could do it on Osmose, but… several people asked that we are really hard on money and stuff like that, or I mean, the contract has to be good, but it was a really bad contract anyway. But, that wasn’t the reason that we said no, it was because Jon was the guy who should really do it. That was the main reason. But it was a really bad contract, really bad deal.

You met him in New York, did you?

Some day Marduk is going to play in Oslo…

Yeah, lots of people are coming over. I just talked to the old drummer in Gehenna, he just called me [about] one hour ago, and he asked if he can come over and sleep here so he could… he has no money, (Laughs)…

Yeah, yeah! He just called me, I haven’t talked for a year or something, and he’s coming over just to see the concert and sleep at my house.

Yeah, I think so, Bergen, yeah… no, he doesn’t live there, but…

Yeah, he lives in Stavanger. That’s where I [was] born, and my old friend, best friend from my young times, he went in [the] same class as Per. I didn’t know Per in between 10 years and 16, I think, or 17, then I met him again, then he was so fucking tall (laughs).

Well, he’s always been big, just he looked exactly the same face as I saw him last time (laughs), that’s funny. He’s a great guy. You never met Marduk?

They’re great guys, too. They’re really good guys. True themselves, you know.

Yeah, they are doing their own thing, absolutely. You know this Panzerfaust and everything?

This… Panzer Division, they got all this tanks, you know? That style, that’s really cool style music, military style and things. They love that music, [they] listen to old Nazi music when they’re playing like the old stuff from 40’s and 30’s…

No it’s not Oi, it’s not new music, it’s made by people in the 30’s.

Yeah, in Germany, it’s real old. Old sound, everything is cool. It’s some old albums which is made on CD and things.

Yeah, I think it was Nazi. Well, it wasn’t Nazi music that time, I think it was a time when the Nazi was going on, like Germany and everything.

Yeah, it’s really cool music, creating great music. Old music with a lot of people… what do you call it when they walk on the street and play?

Parade, yeah, like that, big parade, "Dung, Dung". Fucking great.

Yeah, that’s what they should do. Morgan, he was playing that on the tour. It was a tour with Gehenna, and he was playing that every day, all day in the upper stairs in the bus. It was really great, all the time. He was standing there, it’s like "Sieg Heil" (laughs)…

But just in the bus [?] carefully, though. It’s very hard if you do something like that, it gets fucked up. Especially in Germany… they really fuck you up, then.

Yeah it’s a joke, that’s the cool thing. Cool joke (laughs).

No, we’re not playing. We are not ready to play [anything] off the new album. We don’t want to play any old stuff any more. I mean, we don’t want to play any old stuff before we make something new. It’s stupid just to play and play and play the same shit all the time, never have anything new to show.

We have to give some people that listen to the new stuff also. The new album is gonna be a little bit, it’s the same but also different kinds of songs on the whole CD now, different kind.

Yeah, but they all are the same, if you know what I mean.

We’re gonna make the whole CD like one ‘thing’, you know?

Like one song, but it’s not gonna be one song. It’s gonna be… you can’t play the first song and then the third song, and then the fourth, and then the second. You can’t do that because it doesn’t fit with everything, you have to play 1-2-3-4-5 and up, you know, so you get the real stuff. But that’s how the first one was, too, a little bit like that, but this time we’ve worked more on it to make one whole CD.

No, it depends on the beat. It’s gonna be faster… faster. It’s not like going to be the best song at first, because there’s nothing called the best song or the worst song, everything is best for us, everything. Otherwise, we just throw away the whole thing. You never wanna have any "ok" songs, it’s going to be perfect or nothing. That’s very important.

I don’t think it’s so much planning, I think it’s much more like, "the best song" or, "we should play the best song as second song" or something like that. The thing I noticed a few years ago, that other bands, they don’t have this connection between each other in the band. Like… they don’t stay together everywhere they are, and I think that was very funny that every band wasn’t like that, but now I know no band is like that (laughs).

I haven’t heard so much about it…

Yeah, that’s stupid.

Yeah, we’ve got 100% connection between each other. We are thinking the same way, but we are 3 different… we have, I’m the math guy, math & computers and stuff, and Ravyn is the art guy who paints and all that stuff, making logos and shit like that, all kinds of arts, art head (laughs), and Benny is the fucked up guy…

Yeah, he’s the fucked up one (laughs). But he’s a smart writer, he’s very good in writing stuff, he was very good in school and stuff like that. We are together psychic…we do all the psychic stuff together so that’s why we are the same.

Yeah, everything has to be correct all the time, like machines.

Yeah. And [something] the same girls…

We fuck the same girls.

Yeah.

That’s bad…

(Laughs) It is. Not every time of course, but sometimes. It’s so funny when you hear, "Oh, Benny was so good.." (Laughs) Stuff like that.

(Laughs) Yeah, yeah. But we have people talk to us, like when girls talk to us, they don’t say, "You are so nice", if they talk to me they don’t say "you" like for me, they talk "you guys" are great or something. They never talk to one of us, they talk to all three of us.

That’s great, you know. That’s how you should do…

(laughs)

You mean guitars and things like that?

We have an Ibanez something, and a Gibson Personal… it’s a special edition or something, with a microphone or something on it, you can sing in it. Sing through the pickups or something. I think it’s a wah-wah thing, we’ve never done it. It’s an old jazz guitar, I think, very special one. It weighs 11 kilos. It’s a really heavy one, it’s the most heavy Gibson ever, but it’s wonderful playing. We had it on… they had to fix it somewhere, and there was this famous Norwegian guitar player, fixing his own guitar, and then he was, "Wow, let me check this one. Let me buy it now, I want it!" I heard it cost 40,000 Kronors… I don’t know how much that is…?

No, we bought it for 6,000 Kronors!

I think Benny bought it from his uncle or something. He got it cheap from there, but that’s an old guitar in the family, I think.

Yeah, I had to buy this guitar from Benny because he was using it on drugs. He was going to sell it and he told me, and I just gave him 5,000 Kronors, "Here, give me the fucking guitar." Now the mother has bought it back (laughs) so we don’t own it anymore.

Yeah, we can of course, but as long as not Benny’s using it. But he stopped doing all that stuff now, but that was before, so we had some problems and shit like that. Everyone was fucked up, you know…

No, we have our own. We have the Metal Zone, we have some… we can make a good song on every amplifier with those.

Yeah, I have it on the bass too. We have 3 of those…

What?

No, one each.

No (laughs) that’s crazy. I use this [high-vat??] Double Lead tube amplifiers, and we have another old, old stuff which weighs 25 kilos or something, amplifier, motherfucker. That we got cheap…

Of course, it works really good. We got [something]. And I just bought new Carvin speakers for the drum machine. They’re really great.

I never want to do that, but it’s very expensive. Double price or something, or more than double…

I bought this, when I went over to New York, I didn’t have any bass with me. I was just gonna buy one in America. I bought it in Middletown, I bought this [2BS], then they had to call us [because they] didn’t have 4-strings so I just bought a 5-string. And it wasn’t meaning that I’m gonna have a 5 string, I haven’t used the 5th string so much yet, because that’s not the meaning when I bought it, that’s the only guitar they had so I just had to buy it. We spent about $3,000 one day buying stuff.

Yeah, we had like 1200 Kronors, something like that.

No, I spent like 10 times more.

No, you can spend a million if you want to, there’s no law of that.

No, there’s no law about that. That’s a stupid law. It’s more expensive in Norway so people use a lot of money outside anyway, so we can’t this for a law. Norway’s the second most expensive country in the world.

Yeah, they a got a very good economy… goes up and down. Very up now, cause of the oil, you know. I think it’s 1/3rd of the oil is coming from Norway. The biggest in the world.

What?

Total..?

What do you mean?

There’s a company called "Stat Oil", we have… I don’t know really what the names are, but it is the government who owns everything. That’s how it works, that’s why we’ve got so much money. It’s not like in America, it’s not the government who owns the oil is it?

The law says if you find oil on your ground, it’s ours. That’s how the law is, so you can’t get rich on oil here, it’s impossible. We are poor people here, but it’s a rich government, that’s how it is.

Yeah, they’re christians, that’s terrible (laughs). But it’s not so bad, it’s mostly like in Stavanger, and between Stavanger and Bergen there’s stuff, and more north, they are more christian, they’re crazy, you know. Especially around outer Stavanger… fucking christians, they’re crazy.

That’s the worst place. That’s where Preven’s parents are from.

Preven, the guitar player. His grandmother is down there, they’re so fucking christian.

No, not them, the place where they live… crazy.

They’re crazy… they should be illegal.

Crazy… they don’t want to support war and all that shit, but they do it… the christians, they have all the rage and stuff.

That’s the whole problem…

They don’t understand. You have to go outside this fucking world to see it’s nothing. Out into space… who can be so stupid to think we are the only one on this little place in the big world outside? You’re really stupid if you think that.

We never saw one, but… everything is so far away. How can those people who can go around the universe suddenly see a little, our sun… there’s so many billions out there. They have to search and search and search to find our little earth…

That’s true. That’s what I heard from some astro-guy… he talked about that, if they found civilization on some other planet, they wouldn’t just go straight down and say hello, they would do it slow and make people know that there are something else outside, so they have to think about it. If you come, they maybe kill you or they will make you as a god or something, but they’ll misunderstand everything. That’s what they’re doing to us, maybe. Everyone talks about they met this and this and this… but maybe that’s what they do. Then we have to learn that something else is outside.

That’d be great!

Maybe you’ll become [something]…

(laughs) Why not? We are living souls, too. Everything is [a] living soul, every great stuff. The whole earth is a living soul. When it moves, you know, we move on top of it.

Of course. I think it was when… like, "we don’t know how to make a computer now" but people knew that for 50 years ago, you could say…they knew how everything worked from the beginning. And when, let’s say, 200 years from now, 1,000 years from now, we don’t know how to make a computer now, because we always have it.

And when there becomes a war, everything gets destroyed and just some people are still alive, but they don’t know how to do it. They don’t know how to make the wheel. Maybe that happens… and then the snow comes, and everything crushes and nothing is shown anymore, and then we are a new world again. That could happen.

No, that’s all stupid stuff. Religion [style?].

They need help, everyone. Everyone, which religion they are, helpless people. Think for yourself, make your brain work.

Yeah, that’s cool.

Where do you work?

Surgical?

Hospital stuff?

Wow, that’s cool…

Yeah, I think so…yeah, that’d be pretty cool! You know, we just made a new main hospital in Norway. I used to work in a construction company, we have several companies who worked in the new main hospital. It’s like everyone goes there, they have everything. They have this X-Ray machine, and [it] was too big to get inside the room. They had to make a big hole in the wall to get it in, and it’s not finished, the hospital is not open there. And this machine, they got 2 new, and they cost 10,000,000 Kronars [approx $1,428,571 - ed.] each… and now they have put it in, and lock the wall again, and the old hospital, their one is broken, so they need to borrow one, so they can’t get in touch with the one they bought. They have to borrow one for one million Kronars each month.

That’s insane, and how much do you think it costs to make a new hole in the wall? It’s nothing. They do it, it’s stupid. That’s how Norway, they spend their money.

They’re fucking crazy. And when I went over there, two of the machines… no, I think they bought 4 machines… and two of them, they got water on them, and they destroyed them.

That’s so funny…

That’s how they do it here. They have a lot of money, but they spend too much, just a little bit too much on everything, they are so stupid like that. We don’t get any of the money, they just spend it.

Now I’m going to school for web design.

Yeah, and I work on Friday so I worked today. I fix furniture, like special designers stuff. Very, very expensive, so I have some times which customers…which are the most richest people, so that’s cool. And I’m coming over and they look at me…, "what the fuck are you doing here…" you know…that’s funny. Just talk to them and they’re cool…

Yeah, home to them, and their office…

We only work for the highest [pr—-?] people in companies, on the top on the buildings..

Yeah, it’s really funny.

(Laughs) No, I can’t do that. Then my job is gone.

No (laughs).

They always ask if I smoke or something like that. Some people are really cool, they like our hair style and stuff like that. I and Benny (Cerastes), I had him with me one day at work, just to help me… and this, my bosses said that…he just wanted to say that some special guy is coming on, they always say… when I work on Friday. And I went to hold to someone and they said that, "this Rasta Man, this man who looks like a troll on his head," they said, "is coming over to you and [will] give you the chair that you wanted." And then Benny came too, and he has a lot more, you know… there’s two trolls carrying, it was funny. But it was really nice, "Wow, cool hair!" they said and stuff like that. Yeah, so they’re not all… some people are really cool, even if they got a lot of money.

Yeah, you know, Benny was… we never meet people like that, they’re too old usually. Most of them are around 50, 60 years old, that’s the ones who got the money. But, Benny had some problems, and he was caught by the police, and they thr[ew] him down on the floor, and look[ed] at him, and, "what the fuck? Aren’t you Benny, Cerastes… do you play in Mysticum?"

Yeah, the cops! And he said, "Yeah, of course" and then, "We love Mysticum!" It was so strange, you know? Fucking crazy…

Widing?

The address is something with Widing?

Jorgen Widing?

Yeah, that’s cool.

No, I have to go school, some special school. It’s very new stuff. There are no web designers in Norway at all. I don’t think it’s in anywhere, so when I’m finished… just 4½ months from school and then I’m finished… then I can the job and I can get… there was one class before, 10 people I think, and one of them are earning 800,000 Kroners [approx. $112,000] in a year. A half year’s schooling…

For a company.

(Laughs) Yeah, that’s nuts. I don’t think that’s possible for everyone, of course. There were other guys who was 500,000 and 400,000, but usually it’s at least 250. That’s the lowest, but I think around 300 and 400, that’s more how it can be for me.

And I can work all over the world. That was great stuff for it, too…I can just bring my computer with me and I have this, the band has this moving stuff, so we have special case, cable and boxes for it to go around the world in planes and stuff. So I can bring my computer everywhere.

No, I have a big machine. It’s a big computer, home computer.

It’s a PC. Because of the band and stuff… and you don’t need any Macintosh anymore.

Not for web design. If you have Illustrator and Photoshop, that’s it. That’s all Mac programs usually, where it was best on Mac before, but now they are the same. Now it’s no difference to use anymore. Especially with web design, because the web pages can’t be super high quality, because then it takes a long time to get it to show on the screen. You do it very little and [tightest] as possible…

Yeah, very compact. So that’s a great thing, we don’t have to have the best stuff to do it.

Yeah, that’s what I’m learning. I don’t want to do so much of that, I want to use some programs for it, but I have to learn anyway.

It can fuck it up…

Have you heard about Dreamweaver?

It’s a web designer program. They had it before, but 2.0, which is really good, that’s the school is going to use. Really good stuff. It has automatic making it work for Netscape and Explorer… stuff like that. That’s some problems people say, it doesn’t work on Netscape and it doesn’t work on Explorer, and this program can do it both, so that’s cool. That’s what I’m going to use, I just want to do more of the art kind of stuff, I don’t want to do all the programming.

Nope. The Norwegian one?

I haven’t tried it…

Opera’s not an operating system…?

Linux? The Finnish company… I had this newspaper that showed pictures of Bill Gates and this young Finnish guy, and it was the big guy against Bill Gates. But the difference between them is that Linux is free… (laughs) that’s the difference, so… how can’t they win?

I’m a DOS user, and that’s what I really used. I know what fucked up, I HATE Windows. I remember when Windows 2.8 came or something, I hated that shit program. And I hated 3.11 and now Windows 95… it was great sometimes, but then I stopped doing all the computer stuff, I just used it for music. And then I can only use Cakewalk. I’ve been long away from computer stuff. I’m starting again because of the web design.

You’re not allowed to fix anything…

They fucked up everything. That’s like the same as automatic program like Dreamweaver, example, same thing as Windows, makes things for you instead of you programming yourself.

Then I have to know HTML. And that’s same as I have to know to fix Windows. And sometimes you can’t do that anyway, it’s even worse.

Because it’s so slow comparing to DOS in hardware fixing, really slow. I remember a friend of mine had this Norton Commander… on the DOS? That was really great.

He had it connect the two computers together a long time ago, and he had this special program to make them connect together, but it didn’t work, so he just went into Norton Commander and used the standard stuff from them… it worked! Like, this is goofed up…

Yeah, no problem. Old, good programs like that… I think Norton was the new generation in DOS, their windows and stuff like that.

DR DOS?

No.

Yeah, now I remember…

Shell… yes, of course… now I remember. But it wasn’t that good. I think Norton was much better.

And you can use the mouse…

Yeah you can. If you look at the old Commodore 64, they can do so much on that.

Yeah, Amiga!

No, me neither. But I saw people… they had this limit to go to 50K, and that was all, and they did so a lot stuff on just 50k. That’s what they do it today, they just make all the programs and they use megabytes and megabytes and megabytes… and they can use just a little bit instead. And it gets filled up, they just fill it up, and the machines have to get faster and faster and faster. If the program was a real program, a real good program, like Linux [is] maybe, then everything will work good on old or the newest, they will be super fast.

(Laughs) That’s funny…

I have this teacher who is working [in] a big company who makes everything commercial on computer, everything, very professional, and he told me that America was… what do you call it, like Russia is… like poor country, and they don’t have any new stuff.

Yeah, that’s what he said about U.S., comparing to Norway. You got all that we got, too, but we got all the people who live there, they got it. But in America, just a few people got it. But you are, how many, 260 million? We are 4…(laughs)

That says something…

That’s how it is, that’s what he told me, so when we do web design, we have to think "old" again. Germany, they use 486 usually, it’s not so common to have new stuff there. They have it, but it’s not common. Norway, everyone’s got Pentium, I don’t think anyone’s got other [than] Pentium.

Oh yeah? No, I didn’t know that.

Pentium chips [are] by Intel…?

But it’s so expensive…

Well you know the AMD?

That’s the cheapest one. I got AMD 350 now. I just paid $100 for it, $120 or something, and it works perfectly with my computer. Everything is just perfect.

It’s um… I just worked with a lot of things, I should remember.

Something with X… Epox? Yeah, Epox. I bought that so I can use 500 on that, change to 500, but it’s not the idea to buy the best now, I just bought a cheap 350 instead of buying expensive 450 or something. Stupid to buy the best now, wait a year, then you can buy it.

Widing has that dual… something, he’s got that.

Well you know, the Pentium II, isn’t it? They have this special system on their processors… they don’t have this square kind of stuff anymore…?

They want to get rid of AMD and everyone else. They’re starting to be like Windows…

I don’t think they’re going to win, though. Win Socket 7, that’s the thing…(laughs)

Yeah, that’s true. It’s just fucking crazy…(laughs)

Oh yeah, that thing. That’s crazy. Computers are terrible sometimes. Have you ever tried to smash your computer?

Sometimes I just… you can punch the monitor, because it doesn’t feel anything, you know? Very good thing to punch on.

Oh shit…

Oh no…

Once I lifted the computer and I was standing, ready to throw it out a window… and, "No, I can’t do that…" but I was not far away. And I walked around the house like in 10 minutes, and after 10 minutes I smashed the door or something. (Laughs) I was so angry that long time.

It was something wrong with the Midi card or something… I know it’s not the Midi card so I couldn’t destroy that one…

(laughs) …It was something with Windows. That’s the one that fucked it up, and I got this ISDN, and it was the first one made for Windows 98. When I put it in, it fucks up my sound card and Midi card, and it doesn’t work itself. It fucked up the whole fucking machine, I got so crazy! And all the time I tried to fix it, it went to way in the back and ‘blah blah blah’ all the time. You know the IRQ’s…

He took it from all the others! [something] just give it to him, "okay, get the [something], I have to give someone else it!" (Laughs)

Yeah, I had to do that.

Something I always do when I install DOS 6, or 5, I delete the double space command, at once.

You know what I saw today? On one of those Windows 98, it was something the same, double-something…

Yeah, Windows 98! I thought they knew it was not a good idea to do it.

Yeah, it’s fucking stupid! I hate double stuff… (laughs)

Terrible. I remember this French guy, art guy or something, who had a computer. It was a few years ago when he had DOS. It was DOS 5, and he used the double space, and then his machine fucked up and he lost a half year’s work because of that stupid program. And this guy from IBM help ware told him, "Don’t use that fucking program." (Laughs) "Don’t do it!" That’s funny, people hate it, and they still make it. Terrible. Like a virus.

All the time. I have to go now! Sorry…

No, it’s ok, we talked about everything though.

That’s perfect. Have fun at work, man.

Hellhammer: Well, actually our plan was to go on Friday and play on Saturday and return on Sunday. But, of course, the plane was delayed. We had to stay one night in Amsterdam because of the mist and the fog [forgot to ask if it was funeral fog or moonfog!!], and actually reached Greece…Athens, about 10 o’clock at night, the very same as we were going to play. So it was a total drag. Everything was done in a rush. It was a small club, with maybe 400 people could fit in there, and it was actually 5 or 600 of them inside, so it was a total crowd. After the show…by the way, we had to go through the audience to reach the stage. I hate that kind of thing because there was no backstage there…but we’re talking about Greece, so…well, anyway, after the last song, the guys disappeared. Of course, I was behind the drum kit, which was set into a corner, so I had to move some cymbals to get past there, and of course, the fans rush…immediately was on the stage. So I had some drum sticks and more…it was a total mess there. There was the drum kit, which by the way wasn’t mine, it was rented, and somehow I got out of there, but they took all my sticks and even tried to take the cymbals of the kit…total mess there.

12 or 13…

Yes. That was the reason we went down there to play, just to see how one new song was to play live.

Um…I don’t remember actually.

About 10 years ago or something, when I joined Mayhem, there was some Greek guys coming over to Norway to write about Mayhem. They stayed in our apartment for a while, and it was kind of a big while…stayed there for months. Well, I haven’t seen…he went off to Greece after some time, but I haven’t seen or heard anything from him.

No, according to the one who arranged the gig, he said that he was lurking.

That’s true. My stuff was missing when we arrived in Amsterdam. But luckily, when we arrived in Athens, my snare drum and my pedals and my whole shit was found. But then again, Blasphemer’s guitar was missing, so he had to loan a guitar from the opening band.

Yeah, a red one…no, a black one. But it was like a cheap edition.

He did get it back on Sunday at the airport.

Well, it sucked anyway, but for us this was just kind of a spur of the moment…we just go down there and check out the new song. Also, we had the song to play for fans in Greece. And the fans were…something different.

Very good. But the security had to be much stronger. It was actually our fault, because Necrobutcher was totally drunk as usual, and he said to the security, “we don’t need this security, get the fuck out…” and they went, of course. It was okay for him, you know, but for me, sitting up there as the last person…

Yes.

Yeah. Well, I can play on different drums, of course, but I prefer to play on my Pearl drum kit.

Yeah.

I have a C Set X Custom. It’s quite old, but I think it’s the most solid drums ever made, actually. It’s twice thick shells, and kind of square sized toms, very deep toms. Bass drums, too…and, sounds amazing.

Yeah, you know Pearl is the world’s largest drum manufacturer. Export kits are the birch beginner’s kits. It’s very popular, it’s very good kits but when you’re used to some of their high end kits, like (M?) Custom or the C set X Custom, which I have, or the GLX Super Pro which I had before, going back to Export kits, it’s a little drawback. But, by all means, they’re very good kits, they’re cheap and sounds good…and their hardware is very good.

Well, you know, I also believe…well, I always had Pearl kits. This is my 4th Pearl kit. I started out with a Premiere, a very, very old kit, but Pearl was the stuff I wanted then. Now, I’m very confident with their hardware. If something’s not right, I can fix it like ‘this’, because I know their hardware and I know how it’s done. It’s a little drag, because when you play outside shows, it’s almost only Yamaha kits. Yamaha Recording 9000 or this new stuff they have. At the beginning I didn’t like it because it was awkward for me, hardware wise, but, yeah I really prefer to have Pearl kits all the time.

That’s a Pearl. Well, I have lots of different snares, but this piccolo, maple drum is what I always bring with me.

The one that I used on Misteriis… was an 8″ Pearl stainless steel snare. It was tuned…well, it wasn’t that high, but it wasn’t that low, either. The snare I used on Constellation was also a Pearl 8″ snare, but it was a brass free-floating snare. That was tuned pretty high, cranked up…indeed, it was very good (drums), but now I prefer the piccolo stuff for, you know…Mayhem’s new stuff is kind of hyper-fast. When I play slower stuff, it’s cool to have a snare drum with some body and some depth, but playing this extremely fast stuff, you need a piccolo to really cut through.

Ahh…yes…

I just think I’ve heard some songs from a compilation or something.

When you have a piccolo?

Actually, I think that the deeper drum bounces back better. It depends on what you’re used to. When I started using piccolo, it was kind of awkward, because it felt like hitting the stick on something concrete, something hard, very hard, which didn’t bounce back. Because, for example, a 8″ drum, you have this air between the drum heads which gives you nice bounce back. But, I got used to it and if I could choose, I would prefer the sound of a piccolo but the feel of a deeper snare.

Speaking of technique, or…?

Yeah, it’s like…it’s actually the same as I do, but he holds the stick kind of different. He use something the drummer language call a kind of a “German grip”, which is like palm of your hand down on the drum. But he also hold his forefinger up on the upper side of his drumstick sometimes, and I asked him the reason for doing that, and he said, “well, I can control the stick with my forefinger, too, and the stick doesn’t fly too high up in the air.” I can play like that. I play something called a “French grip”, which is like the thumbs are on top of the drumstick, and your thumbs are almost in the air. So you turn your hand over. And the so-called fulcrum is between the forefinger and the thumb. And I do also this kind of…well, I hit for blast beats and fast ride cymbal stuff, when I hit the snare drum, for example, my wrists…my arm doesn’t move that much, but my wrist is going up while the stick is going down, and when my stick bounces off the head, going up, my wrist is going down. So it’s kind of a…

Yeah, a waving motion. Instead of when you play with your hands…it’s like palms downs, but I have palm of the hand on the side. Know what I mean?

Yeah, well actually on this Milwaukee gig, my left bass drum was creeping forward.

It was a total drag to play, and I was thinking, “hmm, how do I solve this?” and my playing kind of thought…went autopilot.

No, I didn’t feel very comfortable at that gig at all. I didn’t have all my cymbals and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, when I play, and when I play fast, I try to…or, I am relaxed, and if you tighten up when you play fast, you get cramp and you’re not going to be able to play fast for such a long time. But that’s also which one of my first teacher told me, always sit relaxed. And, yeah…just stay calm with your upper body and just let your wrists and arms fly. And legs, of course.

Oh, that’s…[laughs] That’s so old but I remember. It was one of the opening band’s drum kit. I didn’t have anything but my bass drum pedals and my sticks with me. It was kind of old German make called Trixton (?) I guess and it was a total mess, that drum kit. The most shattered drum kit I’ve ever seen in my whole life. But we’re talking about former East Germany now, just after the war breaks down…so they didn’t have any good equipment, and at that time it didn’t play very well, either, so it makes sense. But, this drum kit was unbelievable. The only time I had to play on something worse like that was on the very same tour, but it was in Turkey. That…it was unplayable, that drum kit.

Well, thank you. This album, back then, I went on the stage, I was drunk, I didn’t care that much about…Nowadays, I never drink before shows, not one beer. But, yeah, I guess that people can hear that it is my style, it’s me playing, playing there, even though I didn’t play [laughs] very well, you can tell…

Wow, thank you.

Well, back then I used something called Drum Workshop 5000.

Actually, they’re just a bunch of crap. The hinge between the pedal plate and the heel plate tightens up. They break down easily, so now I use Axis pedals.

Yeah, don’t have them…maintenance free. Best pedals ever, I can’t imagine playing without them anymore.

Thin pedal, yes…

Yeah, I tested it, but there are some problems to that pedal, because, well first, the beater itself…

The felt and the other plastic, the dual beater, you know?

It breaks down very easily. And this rubber thing which they use instead of a spring, it breaks after some use. They’re very nice pedals, very light and very quick, and very cheap too, but compared to, for example, Axis, I really prefer Axis.

Sometimes, but I usually stick w/this which came with the pedal, this hard, plastic ones.

Yeah.

No, they’re made of this stuff called “Delrin”, which is a very hard, very hard plastic.

Well, back then I would prefer wood shell, but I didn’t have the money to buy one [laughs]. Back in Misteriis days, it was stainless steel. But I tried to tune it so it would sound warm and kind of woody…

On the snare or on the whole kit?

I remember when we mic’d it, it was like…well, this studio is called the Grieg Memorial Hall, you know? They used to have big classical concerts there, and I said to the engineer…I didn’t want my drums recorded in the actual studio, I wanted the drums down at this very hall. So we mic’d up the kit the usual way, but we also had some ambience mixed around the drums…

Yeah, I heard about that.

Sitting there and playing, it was very good. So much different from this padded, usual surroundings.

No, I never use rim shots. I don’t know, I should maybe use that sometimes, but, no, just the tip against the head.

Oh yeah. It was, let me think…

Oh, much thicker it was. It was marching…hickory marching stick.

Yeah. I played with the most heavy sticks I could find. Like, with (regal) tip, you know?

Yeah. I always played with heavy sticks back then.

Yeah. Now I use relatively lighter sticks. I use something called a 3A.

For me that’s the best because the actual stick is not so thick, so I can control it better, but it’s much thicker out to the tip, so it doesn’t break easily. And, of course, it’s harder to get the bounce than, for example, a 5B or 5A, which is much thinner towards the tip, but…no, I just like that front heavy feeling of those sticks. 3A, vinyl tip, that’s the thing for me.

Because, well, first, it’s much easier to get a good sound, exactly what sound you’re going to get. Well, almost, then.

No.

Yeah, well the toms are acoustic but the snare…the bass drums are totally triggered. The snare is a combination between triggers and acoustic. Which, by the way, the snare on that album was a very, very old Ludwig brass shell snare drum, 5″.

Yeah.

I used the same, actually. On the second two songs it was no triggering, it was just the actual acoustic. On the last songs I only triggered bass drums and ride cymbal.

Yeah.

With him?

No, he doesn’t play drums anymore.

No.

Well, maybe. He is playing drums, but he’s not hooked on drums the way that I am. He’s drunk all day so he just play the things. He was very into drums around when the Goatlord was recorded, and the very first album, Soulside Journey.

Yeah the snare is very good. It’s a Pearl piccolo free-floating brass shell.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Well, mine is actually more expensive…

All the cymbals and stuff…it’s very, very expensive here. I told Pete (Sandoval) what my drums cost and he, “No, I don’t believe it.” [laughs]

Yeah, he’s endorsed by Mapex. But he preferred the Yamaha…[laughs]

[laughs] That would be excellent, but I think that’s in the long future for me [laughs].

Actually, I am endorsed by a stick company now. Vater sticks. It’s from the states, actually, very good sticks. I also want to be endorsed by Pearl, but of course, I won’t get their interest. [laughs]

Yeah, but maybe they are kind of…they don’t like the satanic image.

I’ve seen that, (in woman’s commecials..?)

It’s true [laughs].

Yeah, he does. I guess that he is endorsed by Sabian cymbals, Mapex drums and Pro Mark sticks, isn’t it?

His drum tech said that he’s sponsored by D-Drums, too.

No, D-Drums, you know, the triggering company?

When we recorded it? No…but drum-wise, I tried to be original. When playing blasts, for example, most drummers at that time were playing straight 16th notes on the, say, ride cymbal, and I tried to kind of mix it up and renew some notes and make it sound interesting. And also the high-hat, on the actual "De Misteriis…" song…

Yeah, lots of other bands. And I also used this kind of X hat, which is a closed high hat on the right side of the kit.

It’s a high hat. It’s not the conventional high hat. The cymbals are the same, but the stand is like…

It’s called an “Aux” hat or something. Auxilliary hat. I used that between the ride cymbal and that hat, and people didn’t believe I was playing, because how can you shift back and forth so fast? Well, it’s no problem because I have a high hat on the right side as well.

It absolutely is. It’s kind of hard to play very, very fast when you have to crossover your arms. So when I play, it always was and is easier for me to play the “Slayer beat”, you know, faster on the ride cymbal than on the high hat.

Yes. I call it “Slayer beat” [laughs]

Yeah, the cheat stuff..?

Yeah, I know…[laughs]

No, it was just me screwing up. I couldn’t hold it anymore.

Well, the ride cymbal on "Ancient Skin" is triggered. So I didn’t use the ride cymbal on that, I used a pad.

Yeah, that’s true. Now I can play just as fast as the ride cymbal as I did on that take. These rubber pads are…you get a much better rebound, so you can actually play faster than on a metal cymbal. That’s the reason for using that, but I could actually played it faster if I wanted to, but Blasphemer said, “No it should go exactly like this tempo.” I was concentrating on the tempo at the end, I couldn’t play the Slayer beat anymore so I had to use this shit-beat [laughs]. It was a very cheap studio, anyway, and we didn’t have all the time in the world, so we just took that. It was the first take, I guess.

Yeah, that’s true, yah.

[laughs]

On the mini-cd, it sounds a little bit more structured and “epic” sounding, whereas on the "Ancient Skin" [promo] you just kinda went in there and fucking blasted it. I just love that, cause it seems like there is more aggression, like, “Let’s just go fucking do this and go.”

[laughs]

Oh yeah, it is. The drums are much more dominant now than before. I think it has to be that way, because this music which we are doing now, it’s much more about beats and drumming, actually. Before, at De Misteriis, I think it was a different lineup and we all were different then. We were much, much more into the occult, satanism and stuff like that, at that time, and the album also came out very dark…

That was a kind of reflection on how we felt that time.

Yes.

That’s true.

[laughs]

Well, at Misteriis, the surroundings in this Grieg Memorial Hall, it was totally dark…and, there was lighting from candlelight. We also did the same when Atilla put the vocals on it, and it created a very gloomy atmosphere. I don’t know…today, it feels, I feel a little bit strange about it, because…back then, there was much more, you know, darkness in our souls.

More brutal, war style…

Yeah. And the new stuff is going to be total war metal. Extremely fast, with Maniac using a megaphone and simulating this sound from the war. The new album is going to be a total killer. It’s going to be so brutal, and…yeah, like that’s when you heard before, I can promise you that.

Yeah.

Ah…Maniac.

That’s right.

About this title?

[laughs] I’m not quite sure. I guess it’s war against everything. Everything he doesn’t like. He writes all the lyrics and we don’t interfere with his lyrical part. It’s hard to understand his lyrics. I guess people have to read them and make up their own minds about what he’s talking about.

Me neither. I don’t know, but suddenly black metal started to be kind of “happy” dark metal, with female vocals and lots of keyboards. Beautiful harmonies, almost like a pop tune. [laughs] I don’t feel that they have the right to call themselves black metal, but they do that because black metal is a trend now, and they did sell more albums. I don’t know, maybe they believe it’s black metal, but for me, it’s not.

Black…

Ah, no…

Yeah, that’s true.

Well, no. He used…the guitar he used was a Gibson Les Paul, and he had this old Marshall, and…his effects boxes was 2 simple boxes. A “heavy metal” box, which he connected together with another fuzz box, I think it was Tube Screamer or Overdrive or something…?

He connected the two together, and when he had his Marshall at a very low volume, it gave this extremely crunch sound. It was very raw, but it was still distinct, so that’s what we used for De Misteriis. Blasphemer uses Crate amplifiers. The sound is not so grim, but it’s not so sharp, either. I think on the new record, we will try to go for a much bigger sound than we did on “Wolf’s Lair Abyss”.

No, we will go in the studio…it’s being delayed and delayed. Probably we will go in the studio around, I’d say that we’ll wait ’til autumn.

Well, [we] really hope to also tour the states again, next autumn.

Not every one. It’s still in the works. It takes time, it takes lots of time, because Blasphemer is very, very picky about this stuff. He writes almost everything now, and we have to be in the mood to create such music. Any percents, like a half song, 50% of a song on the rehearsal, I come up with a drum beat after some days and Maniac starts singing and maybe we just find out that hmm, it’s not working. And then it’s back to the works again to rearrange it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it is. They just start jamming, for instance, and tape the whole thing, and they think, “Oh this riff was cool” and they use that, and just like mix it together to create a song. And I don’t think that’s right.

Look at, [laughs], well, not to compare or anything, but look at the great composers of time. They didn’t make an opus for about, I mean, two weeks, it took years to complete.

Yeah, like De Misteriis, for example, took 6 years to create. Of course, we had lots of problems in the meantime…and stuff like that, but, I mean 6 years from the very beginning when we started writing Funeral Fog and Freezing Moon and stuff. The last 4 songs filled the album…a long time, but…I also think that it became a very classic album.

What I like to play most live is mostly the new songs, actually. But I also like very much to play real old songs, for example, “Necrolust”.

Oh, speaking of strictly De Misteriis, the one that I enjoyed playing most in the studio was "De Misteriis", the track. That was very cool to play, and also, yeah "Cursed To Eternity", cool to play.

On "Fall of Seraphs"?

Yeah, it does, actually…

Yeah, Necrobutcher’s bass has always been an important part of Mayhem. And, if Necrobutcher is going to quit or going to die or something, then we will definitely have his equipment [laughs]…so Blasphemer can record a bass too…if that’s going to happen [laughs].

I don’t know, he’s been quite unhappy now because of police stuff, jail, things like that. So…I think that he manage that just incase, because Necro’s bass sound is a very integral part of the Mayhem sound.

I like drum machines, because you can program the pattern on that, and you can play acoustic drums against it. Drum machines, it’s a very good rehearsing tool or practice tool. But for music, using drum machines as a substitute for a drummer, it’s totally useless and hopeless. For certain types of music it’s okay, but I could never see like Slayer or Metallica or any other band without the live drummer.

Ahh…quite a long time since I’ve seen them now, actually.

They’re totally drug addicts [laughs].

They’re totally into drugs now.

Yeah. Robin [laughs]…he’s good at creating like impossible drum licks. So, for me, “Hey Robin, can [I] create something interesting now…” Because, at that time, and I still have, actually, I’ve had 3 high hats. The conventional high hat on the left, attached very close to the left bass drum pedal, and I have this AUX hat which I talked about. But I also have like a remote hat, a cable high hat, which, the foot pedal plate is close to the right bass drum pedal. And then I play, for instance, 16th notes, ‘diga-diga-diga,’ on the bass drum, and play the high hat at the same time. So it’s like ‘chika-chika-chik’ and ‘diga-diga-ding’ at the same time. So I have a hand free, for example, to play like syncopated stuff on the ride cymbal while the high hats and bass drums are going, and I have the other hand to create some interesting stuff on the snare and toms, so it’s kinda of an “orchestra,” actually.

Thanks. I actually have a very odd idea about a drum part in one of the new songs. I also have two snare drums on my kit, one in the middle of the bass drums and one to the left.

I had 3, but I took one away because space problems…I substitute that space with some splashes now [laughs]. Maybe I told you about that, it’s an idea I have which is going to sound like two drummers. Did I tell you about that?

Okay. You have the blast beat, and you create that by playing on your right bass drum pedal together with the cable high hat at the same time. In the middle you use your right hand for the main snare.

No, you use the right hand only on the main snare. The other beats are like, for the bass drum, you hit the bass drum with the right foot and also pedal the cable high hat at the same time, by pressing, by having a real big foot (laugh), because the pedals are placed very close together. So, then you can, with just one foot and one arm, you can create this blast beat which sounds like 3 limbs.

That’s like triplets between two bass drums and alternating between the toms with my left arm.

The toms have a lot of reverb on them. I guess it sounds bigger than it actually is. But it’s no overdubs or anything, I played everything at like one take. A lot of people have asked me about that, though. It’s like, “Hmm, I see you have made an overdub here.” And I said, “What?? Of course not!” And I show them how it’s done and they’re like, “Oh,” [laughs]. They can hear the ride or the high hat go at the same time, and then they wonder…they also wonder quite a bit on the track, the slow track…

"Life Eternal", yeah. There’s a section in the middle there where the guitar goes alone…

And then they hear this chika-chika-chika with the high hats going on, and then they hear me (adapting) some crashes here and there and they ask, “Hmm..?” Okay. But what I did then, actually, the sound that you hear at the beginning, this chika-chika-ching is me pedaling the conventional high hat and the cable high hat…

Yes. And I play the bass drums at the same time, and later at the end of the riff I go over to 16th notes on the high hat, like the regular way. People think that, when this record came out, I think in Norway it was ‘93 or something, they thought that it was a good deal of overdubs, and they also thought that I had actually speeded up the drums, back then. Today, it’s not fast, by no means, but back then it was quite fast and some people, “Hmm, he has been speeding up the drums,” but I have actually never ever speeded up anything.

[laughs]

No.

He’s very good at combinations between bass drums and tom toms, very good at that. He’s a very good drummer, and it should be really cool to meet him, but I don’t have the pleasure of doing that yet.

When I started out, my favorite drummer, my role model so to speak, was Impaler of Motorhead. He had this incredible quick, at that time, right hand, with these 16th notes on the high hat, but playing this punk beat. And open and closing the high hat, it was so cool. The same goes for the drummer in Ramones, Marky Ramone or no, Joey Ramone..? Later it was like Clive Burr from Iron Maiden…he became a huge influence on me. I [set up] my drum kit the same way as he did [laughs]. Today, I don’t think I have a favorite drummer, but I really think that Nicko Mcbrain from Iron Maiden is played, he was actually a big influence on me back in the Aspera… days of Arcturus.

Yeah, it’s a very good album, but it’s a shame, it should have been better produced. By the way, there’s also no triggers on that album.

No.

You asked me why I use triggers, one of the reasons is that you can get a much better sound, you are coming better much better across when you use triggers. When you play festivals and stuff like that.

Actually, using triggers, it can cause a little bit of cheating because you can adjust your drum module to…when it’s constant velocity. Like, a soft stroke is going to sound the same all the time. At the studio now, I won’t use…I will maybe trigger the bass drums, but no toms and no snare drum.

Motley Crue?

Yeah!

Yeah, yeah.

24×24?

[laughs]

That’s cool.

By the way, when the kick drum became this long, usual size is like 16 or 18…when it became as big as 24, it was long, then the response of trying to play the kick drum fast, it became a big pain in the ass, actually. The more shallow the drum is, the easier it is to get a good response from the drum. So I have a hard time playing real fast on that drum, I guess…

For playing fast, the ideal stuff should really be a 20×14″ kick drum, really. For this kind of exteme fast metal stuff…for rock n’ roll and stuff, it’s good to have a big, boomy sound, but I think that…I’ve seen also a lot drummers including myself go back to using light sticks, lighter, smaller cymbals, and the more things that jazz drummers are using, when it comes to extreme metal. Before, it was a spoken rule that, “well, if you play metal, you’re going to use these huge, long sticks, you have to use like 20″ crash cymbals and 15″ high hat…”

…and of course, an 8″ deep snare. Today we use smaller kick drums and thinner and smaller crash cymbals, darker sounding ride and high hats, we have piccolo drums which was originally for fusion players, and using lighter, much lighter sticks. [The] drummer in Dimmu Borgir uses 5A, he has 20″ kick drums and very light cymbals, and I think…I was thinking of it the other day, actually. They are into this extreme metal playing, going actually back to, they’re like jazz and fusion drummers are.

Yeah…

(something) feel like the drummer in Voivod, for instance. He used this extremely big set before, and when I saw him play in Oslo one half year ago, he used a 4 piece drum kit with 3 cymbals. By the way, I heard he was dead now…

Yeah, because they were supposed to play at some festival. I was playing there together with Covenant and they were supposed to come but I heard their bus had an accident.

Well, well.

Absolutely, yeah [laughs].

Yeah.

[laughs] I still work there, I actually worked there last night.

Usually pretty quiet, tonight actually I had to be a little bit rough because one patient was like…um, very unpleasant. I’ve worked with this stuff like 5 years now and I feel that my temper, I have a very short fuse [laughs], so…maybe I’ll get fired or something for being violent to the patient, I don’t know, but…I don’t care, I’ve worked there for 5 years now and I’m sick of it! [laughs]

No, when I’m pissed off I don’t like to play drums. I like to play drums when I’m in total harmony with myself, when I feel that, “Hmm, I need to go play drums now.” I do that, because I have a drum kit at home, or like an electronic drum kit. It’s like, go and eat, go and drum, read little bit of a book, go drum, watch some drum videos, and then go drumming again. That’s how my days are, because I work at night and I’m alone here in the house the whole day before my girlfriend returns.

Not so much as I should. Before, I was practicing like up to 7 hours in a row, every day, but today it’s like seldom more than half an hour in a row, and then I’ll take a break, but then I go back again and play. I still play, but not for so long because I don’t like playing electronic kits, I like the acoustic stuff, and my drum kit is at the rehearsal space, and it’s a drag going there just to play. Before, when I was living at my parents’ house, I had a drum kit in my room. I was sitting there always, playing and playing to records, all the time, sometimes up to 7 hours in a row. I wish I could have an acoustic drum kit here, but there’s space problems. Besides, the neighbors would go crazy [laughs].

Yeah, I do that now to the drummer of Dimmu Borgir. We meet like 2 times a week and I give him lessons and things to learn them at home. He’s the classic example of a student who’s like, “Show me something cool” and he sits beside and I watch him, and I play some licks and then he wants to try to play it immediately after, but he has a hard time doing that, of course, because it takes at least some time practice to master it, and I tell him to, “Hey, go home and work at your rudiments and stuff like that first, so you get a good foundation to build on.” You don’t fill out the strong foundation, you can’t really, if you learn something new, it would be so good and so secure if you have this real well built foundation. So it’s very important to learn the real basic things right, first, before you attempt on going on (something), and trying this technical things because then these things will come across very badly, very poorly.

Yeah, absolutely. Because each time you’re practicing, say rudiments, you might feel that you’re not going anywhere, that you have (made it), you know? But, the fact is, while that you feel this, you are exactly, you’re building…well, I don’t know how to pronounce it in English [laughs]

When you play these rudiments over and over again, sometimes you feel that this is going nowhere, but it actually isn’t true, because each time you get a little bit better, you work on the stuff, you’re secure about them, suddenly it all clicks together.

I listen to very much, actually. Much of the music I listen to is just for listening to the drummer. For instance, well, hip-hop groups and stuff. It’s like, some of the hip-hop albums, it’s like drum machines, but it’s kind of a gold-mine for me to pick up on, because it’s unknown territory drum-wise for metal drummers in general. I try to adapt that and learn styles from that, and try to copy some of the stuff that I hear which I think is cool, and play it myself. It’s cool to play, it’s very different groove, actually…

Absolutely. That’s what I did before, I played in a progressive metal band at the same time as I played in Arcturus, before, and it was very rewarding for me, because, then again I could take these impressions that I have from that band and mix it into Mayhem stuff. So I feel that a lot of black metal drummers are listening only to black metal and they can’t play anything but black metal or metal, and then their playing becomes very one dimensional.

Absolutely. Thats’ a very good way to learn and make interesting things that you’re actually pleased with yourself. [coughs] I’m sorry, I’ve got little bit cold here.

That’s good. Hopefully. Well, here in Norway it’s very cold weather right now.

At least until March.

Yeah it is, and it starts like in November.

Yeah around January and stuff it’s like (breath of air)…very cold. Lot of snow and stuff.

That’s true…it could be different if we years ago decided, which we didn’t, but if we decided to sign on a big label and all that shit. We change, become mainstream and record a lot of albums and that, Mayhem could be a very huge band. But that was actually the least thing we wanted. We wanted Mayhem to stay underground. We wanted also, yeah as you said, quality before quantity.

I’m actually sick of this stuff, with half-naked women all over and this vampire crap. I’m sick of it.

Yeah, the fans. The fans, they see a half-naked lady on the album cover, and, “ah! I gotta have this!” So fucking stupid. These bands create music for like…I don’t know, mindless teenagers?

Well, people which is into that kind of music simply won’t understand new Mayhem stuff, because it’s so complicated, and they don’t have…they won’t understand what’s going on [laughs].

So the stuff that we’re writing now is absolutely, as I said before, music for the experienced listener.

[laughs] On Wolf’s Lair Abyss…well it was actually the same when Misteriis came out. Nobody actually liked Atilla’s vocals but a few.

We also got some criticism regarding Maniac’s present singing style. I can understand to a certain point, it sounds one-dimensional and very screamy, but that’s what we wanted it to sound like. For The Grand Declaration of War it’s going to be much more varied, different singing. Also, they go a little bit back to stuff which he did on Deathcrush. The new album is going to be a real killer. They say in Germany, “killah…”

Oh, I haven’t even heard it…

I know, and Emperor is playing "Funeral Fog", and they got Atilla on vocals. [laughs]

No it’s true. Actually, we play[ed] the gig in Milano and suddenly Atilla was showing up there, from nowhere. We taped this gig , and…”Hey, long time no see.” He actually joined Maniac on the last two tracks. It was "Funeral Fog" and…not "Cursed To Eternity", but the other…

"From the Dark Past", yeah.

It sounds like a wolf on the window or something, like “wecchhhhaaaaa!!” I don’t know…

This Emperor track is quite good played and stuff like that, and Atilla’s vocals are fantastic, but…the atmosphere is gone, actually. Sad but true, there’s something missing. I don’t know, it’s just a feeling that is gone, but…good drum playing in the song. They play it actually a little bit faster…

Well, Euronymous was extremely fast on picking. His hand was just a blur, like ‘ddddrrrrrrrrrr’. I remember he told me how much he could do in one second. It was…very much. How much was it…*thinks*…well, he’s definitely double picking.

Like 3 at most…but…let me see how much did he get in a second. I’m still thinking about that.

That’s true.

It’s gotten out of hand, everybody’s doing this tribute shit now.

Yeah, it’s boring, actually. Motorhead tribute from Dwell Records…

Yeah, I got [a] letter from Dwell Records saying that…well, some posters. It’s out anytime now.

That would be interesting, yeah. No, it has become very boring now, with all these metal bands doing metal covers. It’s never going to be like the original, anyway, so…

No, no. That’s true. And for me, the word “rockstar”…is a very negative meaning. Because the word “rockstar” for me is like, don’t speak to the fans and don’t…well, just being a total asshole. [laughs] I mean, it’s very important and it’s very rewarding too to stay in touch with your fans, because without the fans, the band is nothing, actually. It’s very important. And I get a lot of backup from Mayhem fans and Covenant fans, Arcturus fans, and it’s totally cool. Fenriz had this idea once, too… “I’m well known now so I don’t have to speak to anybody…” [laughs]. One of his moody changes, but he soon found out that, “This is not, heh, what I thought it to be,” so he became his old self again. That is like…yeah, to speak and drink and…well, have a good time, as he probably would say…

Actually, Frost bought my drum kit. The black one, the Pearl GLX Super Pro.

Yeah, he has it now. The same one I recorded De Misteriis… on. The Burzum was recorded on that, also…

The first…let me think…well, yeah. Okay [laughs].

No, I don’t know. I’m not too into this synth music which he creates now. [He meant Burzum, I didn't clarify]

Actually, there’s a new Arcturus coming out in the next week. It’s called Masters of Disguise and it will contain 2 or 3 songs played by us, the Arcturus lineup, and the rest of the songs is like remix done in collaboration with other artists. It’s only remix of the La Masquerade Inferale record, but there also is a completely new song by Arcturus, and also we were doing a re recording of "Du Nordavind" from Aspera… and "Constellation". It’s out anytime now.

They have, yeah…

They do the drum machines very tactfully, actually, and create very interesting beats around the drum machine, but it would be so great to see that band live or hear it on record with a live drummer.

Yeah.

I’ve heard that, yeah. I’ve never heard them live, but people say that it isn’t that weird. But you can never replace a live drummer. But of course, for bands like Mysticum, their music is good with this kind of drum machine stuff. For Mysticum, it’s okay…

Yeah they look very cool live! [laughs]

Yeah [laughs]…

Yeah, that’s true.

I’ve never seen them, but I just heard one of their records.

The same as Samael is doing…

They have samples and I guess that they also hit some drums once in a while, too.

Chris from Samael, he did lights for us at the Covenant tour last year. I remembered him because he and another guy in Samael, I don’t remember his name, was actually visiting us in Norway in this record shop, Helvete, many years ago. I remember him there, and he remembered me, “Oh, yeah…of course..!”

Well, it was like me and Euro’s shop.

It does. I totally agree…it’s nice sounding in a commercial way. In Covenant, I just play drums…and…shut up [laughs].

Yeah it is. It’s like, it requires a total different playing style for Covenant and, for example, Mayhem. And for me, it’s very rewarding to play different styles. In Covenant, my abilities of playing slower stuff is coming through.

What kind of cymbals do you have?

Oh yeah, the Mega Bell ride…

Yeah. Really, you just have to look at them, and they crack. Paiste have wonderful…especially their rides and high hats, but the crashes and chinas crack very, very easily. I found out that the best for me is Sabian HH series.

For high hats, for main high hats, I use 13″ fusion hats with extremely heavy hand hammered bottom cymbal. I use 2 bottoms, one on top and one on bottom for that, to get really, really heavy stuff. For rides, I have 22″ HH Neil Peart ride, which I used on every record except for …Misteriis, because this has [a] very dry quality, very dark and dry, and you can hit with the shoulder of the stick as hard as you can and it still sounds very clean, articulate without becoming washy or noisy. Crashes are all like Sabian HH series, which I’m very, very happy about. Try them out if you like crash sounds which are not too obnoxious.

Yeah, they are actually the best Ziljdians, A crashes…

Absolutely. At one gig I just played in London, I had this Zildjian A, it was a fucking 18″ rock crash. It was thick as a ride cymbal, and when I hit it, it [would] run for days, like ‘rrrriinnnnng’…

…totally messed up everything. I like 16″ cymbals, or 17″, but they [have] to be dark sounding. To blend wit